Another prius problem I have and see coming up Traction control

I'm sorry to say but the traction control needs a override. Trying to drive up a hill which was plowed and everyone else was climbing it ok the prius just kept getting slow and slow to where it stopped in the road. Both wheels were spinning due to the film, a salt/snow mix. Two say the least the car would not go up the hill and every one else was!! Got to go.

 

If both wheels were spinning, an override would not have helped. Only better tires or chains would help in that situation, as the tires lost traction. The normal complaint is that traction control removed power from the wheels, which is where an override might help.

The only exception to this is if you are one of those drivers that try to burn down to dry pavement. That can work down south where they don't get much snow, but it fails miserably in real winter conditions.

Tom

 

Odd, that isn't what I experienced last night. Even with OEM tires well beyond their winter life span, triggering TC at quite low torque levels, I made it up past a couple other vehicles that had slid off the road and already had towing assistance.

The sanding truck started down the hill just before I crested.

 

I have the same problem. Once it starts to spin, it is done. It is designed to do just that protecting the drive train. My wife said it was not meant to be driven on snow. "It is a summer car only".

 

What tires were on the car?

 

The Prius is a POS in snow. I would'nt drive one in the winter. It got stuck in 4 inches in my drive so I left it sit til the snow melted.

 

BTW/I was raised in snow country, Western CO is where I learned to drive. 30 ft of snow were normal on Monarch.

 

we don't have any gravel roads anymore.

 

Same question as to the other guy: What tires were on the car?

 

It comes down to people who don't know how to drive (who will always claim that they do) and the tires.
I run Gislaved Nordfrost 5 and have had NO problems in the past 3 winters I've driven with them.
I live up a 2 mile STEEP hill. My house is at the very top of the hill. I've had to actually stop for cars coming down the hill (who won't give me the right away even though they're the ones with the momentum on their side) with 7 and 8 inches of snow on the road and the car still makes it up the road without flashing any lights at me.

If that doesn't tell you that it's not the car, but it's the tires then I don't know what else will.

 

All anecdotal. I assume you would agree that x-ice's are good tires? Well, they left me stranded too. Thank you traction control. You are apparently the self appointed best winter driver ever. I suck at it even though I've been doing it all my life. You would know. Are you SO egotistical as to believe that because you've never experienced a problem with traction control it must not exist? I believe you are. I bow to you, I'm not worthy.

And how do you explain the problems with traction control on gravel? Oh yeah, no one has gravel roads anymore. It's NEVER our beloved Prius' fault. It's perfect. Damn, I keep forgetting the number one Prius Chat chant.

Zhe Wiz

 

There are more variables than car and tire... if you are trying to go uphill in a front wheel drive car and you have loaded a bunch of people and gear into the back then you will get stuck. There has to be weight on the drive tires as well as friction. Even perfect friction between your tire and the snow won't help you when there's no friction between the snow layers themselves.

As far as the tc goes, in any reasonable situation (ie off a drag strip with an obscene amoust of power that doesn't apply here) you always in any car get the best acceleration when the tires don't spin. Since the tc doesn't kick in til they spin, it shouldn't really be an issue if you're careful. I know that the way the tc does kick in isn't the most gentle and maybe it doesn't recover as fast as some would like... but I consider it my failure as a driver if my tires spin when I'm trying my best to accelerate.

Anyone complaining about this can point me to the data somewhere showing a higher coefficient of kinetic vs static friction for rubber to pavement or rubber to snow. (and I know that for braking it is possible to stop faster by locking up in some conditions, but that's due to heating of the small contact patch which doesn't apply to acceleration and certainly not on snow)

 

Gravel, gravel, gravel! And did I mention gravel? You guys always assume the driver isn't knowledgable enough, or careful enough, or skilled enough. It could NEVER be the car (see the Prius Chat chant above). Well, guess what. You are wrong, plain and simple.

The other thing you are ignoring is momentum. When the Prius TC kicks in, it KILLS momentum. A little spinning as a trade off for keeping momentum would be a good thing. That's where the TC is too (WAY TOO) aggressive. You all need to get out of the theoretical world and into the real one for a day or two. I think the Prius TC designers spent a little too much time there as well.

I was in a situation going up a relatively steep hill, around a corner on a seasonal limited use highway (yes, the kind that supposedly doesn't exist anymore). The end result was that if I eased into the throttle, giving it enough power to ascend the hill, the wheel immediately spun, TC kicked in and stopped any progress. I tried being gentle, I tried being obnoxious with the throttle. No matter what I did, the car would not move. I had to back down. The road wasn't the slightest bit wet, snowy or icy. It was a beautiful, sunny, 85 degree day.

The Prius' traction control works fine in MOST situations, it's quite good actually. But in certain situations such as the one I ran into, it is bad, very, very bad.

There are way too many variables. Just because you made it through a foot of sleet and freezing rain, passing SUVs and Subarus off the road in the ditch while traveling 60 MPH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH... That doesn't make the traction control trouble free. You know what? I've done the same thing in the Prius when traveling the back way to North Pole, NY just this past December. The car was great! But I have also seen "the other side", and it's NOT very comforting once you've experienced it.

The Prius' TC is not the weak link in most situations, but in some it very much is. And if you ever find yourself in the wrong set of circumstances, good luck. You'll find you're not as "good" a driver as you think you are.

Honestly, I don't know why I bother. MOST Prius Chatters simply do not want to hear anything bad about their perfect Prius. I don't get it. You'd think you'd want to get to the bottom of the problem instead of dismissing it as driver error. At least be aware the problem exists instead of running around in denial.

Zhe Wiz

 

Well I believe I stated that the tc isn't gentle enough and recovers too slowly and referred to pavement and snow not gravel. Are you saying though that spinning the tires on gravel is better at accelerating than using a bit less go pedal and avoiding the spin on other cars?

 

Was this a gravel road? Your post started out talking about gravel. I can only assume that was the problem with this limited use highway, but you didn't clearly state it as such.

As for gravel, I can only concur. I've had a terrible time on steep gravel roads when we go rock climbing. I was able to climb these same roads with a rented Ford Focus, but the Prius was completely paralyzed by them. Better tires helped, but it was still a band-aid on a bad situation.

Gravel is one of the special cases where wheel spin can make a big difference. Gravel packs up and locks together, allowing slipping tires to grip better than expected.

Tom

 

Yes, it was a gravel road. I've explained the same scenario several times in other posts, I get tired of repeating myself and leave stuff out, apparently!

Spinning would have been the only way to ascend that gravel covered hill. Being gentle was useless because being gentle didn't give the car enough power to move forward, the hill was too steep.

I saw the exact same thing happen with snow. I realize that IN THEORY it is best not to spin, but that THEORY ignores other things, such as momentum. I am WAY BETTER at modulating the throttle and reading the reaction of the car then the Prius' TC is.

Spinning is NOT NOT NOT always bad, EVEN ON SNOW. Minor spinning to maintain momentum is sometimes CRITICAL to getting past a particularly slippery spot, especially (but not solely) when that slippery spot is only on one side of the car. The Prius's TC does not differentiate between one side or the other. If EITHER side spins, both wheels lose power, even the one with traction.

I have another post on PC which describes my difficulty ascending a snow covered hill too. It was, admittedly, about the worst case you can imagine. I was towing an empty 500lb. trailer and had several hundred lbs. of hunting gear along with a hunting buddy in the car. There were 6ish inches of heavy wet snow on the road, the roads were NOT plowed. I came to a T in the road, there was a stop sign and I needed to turn right. The road onto which I was turning, was sloped upward, only somewhat steep at first, then steeper, then in the middle of the steep part, I had to make a VERY sharp left turn (140 degrees or so). I needed to use the first part of the hill to gain momentum for the second part.

I've done this slipper ascent hundreds of times before with AWD (easy!) and FWD cars. The trick is to gradually go heavier on the pedal while "reading" the car's steering wheel, momentum and wheel spin, back off a wee bit to keep as much momentum going as possible, go harder on the accelerator when possible, back off when necessary. All very minor inputs. You can feel what the car is doing and adjust.

That is, if the car isn't a Prius (and possibly others, I won't discriminate TOO much, but the Prius is the only one I've ever had this problem with). The Prius' TC doesn't "do" gentle. It doesn't do a LITTLE reduction when it senses spin, it does a MAJOR reduction (in power) when it senses spin. So much so, that in the situation described above, it was unable to maintain speed, and I gradually slowed to a near stop. I aborted the climb, MAYBE I'd have made it, but I didn't want to risk having to back down the hill with the trailer. (Not that I couldn't have, by the way, I've also backed up cars, trucks and tractors with trailers all my life, but it's not fun when you don't have the road to yourself.)

So, did the TC do what it was supposed to? I suppose so, if it's "supposed to" stop a wheel from spinning. I did NOT optimize traction. I can VERY confidently say I am much better than it is when it comes to optimizing traction. That is, in a 100% GAS ENGINE POWERED vehicle. I have no doubt that with all the torque on tap at the Prius' wheels, I would have a much more difficult time modulating the throttle using the method I use with all other cars. BUT, that's not my point. My point is the TC on the Prius is good in most situations, but HORRIBLE in limited others. I think the programmers could have fixed it, but maybe not, I don't know the breaking points of the various components, nor how much stress could be placed upon them with a better system.

PCers who are a fan of the Prius' TC say "you need to go more gentle on the throttle and avoid TC." Well isn't that just great! First, sometimes you CAN'T use less throttle because of the HILL (hello?) and doesn't that indicate that there's a problem with the TC anyway???? Why does that behavior excuse it? Excuse me??

I spent 3 winters with 2 Priuses (sorry Toyota, Prii doesn't cut it) and I have only been caught out twice by the TC. 99% of people do not travel the roads I travel in the weather I travel in. Most would wait for plows, most would not go on a seasonal limited use highway...ever. I regularly do both because of deer hunting mostly. For a typical driver, the Prius is quite good in the snow (VSC is AWESOME, TC is so-so). I would like the 1% to know what they are getting into, and that the Prius may not be the best choice.

I still love my wife's Prius (and my wife!!), and we drive it whenever the roads are clear, or if our path will be relatively flat. It's a great car with a Traction Control issue, and if that's all that's wrong with it, that's not so bad for most people. But I'm tired of people denying there's a problem because "spinning on snow is never good" or because they've "never had an issue." Then following their conclusion with "if you've had a problem, you're a bad driver who thinks flooring it when stuck and spinning incessantly are good things." That "logic" is...well, NOT logic, and not exactly scientific either!

I think I'm done, but I'm afraid if I see another person post that the TC is great because they live in <Insert cold snowy place here> and have never had a problem, I'll have to post again. TC isn't GREAT, but most people will never see the problem, and many others will live with it. I couldn't live with it and traded it in for a gas hog. (one of them, we had two!)

Wow, that was long. Can you tell I'm on a keyboard and not my iPad???

Zhe Wiz

 

Well, I almost sold my '04 Prius the first winter I had it, due to the IMHO dangerous TC. Yes, also learned to drive in "real" winter conditions. Yes, tried a variety of studless and finally studded winter tires, and very aggressive studded winter tires cured most of the winter traction problems

First year I had my Prius, a few of us from the office rented a cabin at a tourist camp between Kenora and Dryden. A gravel road - an old logging road - with a switchback and one steep gravel hill.

My co-worker with the Lexus RX300 had no problem, which is what I would expect. My Prius simply came to a stop halfway up the hill, refused to go any further. This was with the Michelin Harmony "all season" tires I ran the other 3 seasons of the year

The co-worker with the VW Golf tdi stick shift had zero issues. He had to carefully steer around my stalled Prius, and with very minor wheelspin motored up the hill

The co-worker with the Lexus turned around to rescue me. We used the emergency towing eyebolt in the front bumper to pull the Prius up.

My '07 also comes with TC, but it works like is should be applying a brake to a spinning wheel. However the TC isn't easily cheated or disabled

I will note that for 2010, Toyota added a TC defeat button to the FJ. Wonder why?

A co-worker bought a new Mazda 5 with auto transmission. It also has a TC defeat button

So yes, I understand the issues with the Prius TC, especially in my '04 Prius. I finally sold my Prius around 1.5 years ago, simply because I no longer drove it. Thanks to a promotion, a transfer, and a different home, I can do most of my work from my home. Or I'm away on business

Last year I put 4,200 km on my FJ. This year I'm well on track to put half that on the FJ

 

Many, if not most non-hybrids w/TC I've seen include a button to disable it.

 

7 years of Prius and no issues in snow. Yes we get snow. No, the plow doesn't always get out ahead of me. If the car doesn't perform, get something else. it seems simple enough. some of us really have no issues. i repeat sell the car if you have problems. get something that is better...for your driving situations. and, really, 90% of the driving can be perfect in a Prius. the other 10%...well...you have to make the decision if that 10% warrants a different car.

 

I DID!!!! I repeat, I DID! The Outback Sport is the car I take when conditions do not favor the Prius' poor TC.

Zhe Wiz