I’m not using my Prius as plow, but even when I had a Honda Ridgeline AWD, as long as I had clearance underneath the car and snow and ice, I would drive my Prius on my hundred mile round-trip to work. Yesterday I was trying to get my daughter and other college kids unstuck from snow and ice in a parking lot with a pretty steep incline. I laid down about 400 pounds for traction and my Prius never got stuck, but and trying to show my daughter how to drive and get out of the parking lot uphill, the 2010 Camry always struggled. I was surprised because it has new tires with better tread. It even weighs probably 200-500 more, and it thought that might help- but not at all. Maybe it depends on the displacement of the weight. Just to add to the “Prius instead of a truck” discussion that some have had, I am actively looking for a new to me Ridgeline after mine was wrecked, but my Prius has been unstoppable in this snow over the years .
The Ridgeline is a car with a truck bed. It's probably more useful on snow and ice than some real trucks because it's FWD and because it has marginally higher ground clearance than a G3. There's NOTHING wrong with a car cosplaying as a truck. They're just not suited to some people's needs.
Using a boat as a snow plow is what I think of when it comes to using a Prius as a snow plow. As in a boat is designed to run on top of the water/snow, rather than into and under the snow. As in Prius are so light and ride lower than most cars, so it hardly takes any snow to high center them on snow and at that point it doesn't matter how good your tires are because they won't be touching the ground enough to get traction.
I wonder where the myth that weight is advantageous for traction on slick surfaces comes from. For two-wheel-drive vehicles, the percentage of weight on the drive wheels is critical, other things being equal.
I think the origins of it is empty pickup trucks are very light in the back over the main drive wheels and its been common to put sand bags back there in winter... Of course extra weight over the drive wheels doesn't matter much when the belly of your vehicle rides so low that driving over snow causes it to lift the wheels off the ground.
But adding weight in the back of the pickup works because it shifts the driven/undriven wheels weight ratio, not because of the overall increase. Adding weight in the back---or even middle---of a front-drive vehicle makes the traction situation worse. You can't lift the wheels off the ground that way, although you certainly can plow into snow deep enough to stop forward motion when traction is already iffy.
