Hows the prime in winter and heavy rain?

Here in Maine the Prius Plug-in works great.

I love it's winter road handling [on snow and ice]. We only run on studded winter tires.

 

1st - COINGRATS on becoming a Primer. You are going to love this car.

2nd - You did not say what part of the country you live in. Makes difference to if you need a set of winter tires or not. I'm in Nebraska. We get our share of snow, ice, rain. The tires that came on the car have done well so far and this has been a rough winter so far.

Prime On !!!

Opps !!! you did state where you are from. Never mind.

 

Yes.

The road in our town is iced over all Winter. The plow trucks scrape it smooth, which fills in the potholes, but we do not expect to see pavement until next Spring. Sometimes when it gets warmer [up into the positive F temps] the ice will glaze and become extremely slick. Without dedicated winter tires, you would never be able to drive safely.

Not to mention crossing any of the rivers or lakes.

We do not get much 'rain' here in Winter. Temps need to be much warmer before water can be in liquid form. Besides once it gets that warm the ice on the rivers will have thawed. So you can not drive on the rivers anymore after that.

 

For the OP, the tires your car comes with will probably be just "ok" for the first year. For the next year and following you really should consider proper winter tires. ONE slide into another car will cost the same as the four steel wheels with tires. And it could be much worse. Or you could get "all weather tires" such as the Nokian WRG3, which work fairly well in winter and don't wear excessively in summer.

Regardless of tires however, ground clearance will be the limiting factor in snow. 4" or deeper will be problematic. Unless you really want to plow the roads for the county.

 

With snow tires comes the age-old question: will you want extra TPMS sensors. Some US states require TPMS at annual inspection, some don't. Also, I think at federal level, all tire shops are legally obligated to send you on your way with sensors, or face prosecution. There may be a loophole if you bring in loose rims, do your own mounting?

If you just pay the piper, install additional regular Toyota sensors I'm not sure what you're looking at, somwhere between $50 and $100 per sensor? Plus an annual twice yearly charge to have a dealership hook up Techstream and reinitiallize, with every swap, for maybe an additional $100?

The alternatives:

1. Don't use sensors on the snows. This is dead easiest, but becoming increasingly dicey in the States I think.

2. Read up, get the equipement to do your own initializing of the sensors, and/or get cloneable sensors. Not trivial or cheap, but cheaper, at least.

For a perfect fit steel rim, that doesn't require hub adapter rings, I'd recommend:

Corolla steel rim, part no: 42611-02471 (2003-2008 corolla or matrix, CE, LS, S)
steel rim lug nuts, part no: 90942-01007 (plain, open-ended, galvanized)

 

Not on Prius. It requires the Toyota maintenance computer program plugged into the car. The option Mendel forgot to mention is the one I use - I replaced the stock "rim protectors" (stock tires) with Nokian WRG3 tires. No swapping required in winter and summer. They are true all weather tires and they work pretty well. Bonus, they resist hydroplaning better than the summer tires you might be using in the summer heavy rain.

 

Only on some other car brands. Toyota, and I believe the Asian brands in general, haven't adopted (or paid the licensing royalties for) a plug-and-play version.

 

Toyota's implementation of TPMS, coupled with increasingly inflexible US regulation, is detrimental to having an extra set of wheels with full-on snow tires.

@David Beale 's suggestion is one compromise with promise. The downsides though: the WRG3 and similar (though the field is fairly limitted) entail compromise at both ends of the spectrum. They are not as effective as a winter tire, and will have higher rolling resistance, give up some mpg, and wear faster, through summer.

If the TPMS sensors were cheap and and plug-and-play, this would go a long way to alleviate the current impasse.

At least in Canada for now, there's no regulation insisting you must have TPMS sensors, and our snow tires don't have them. But that mostly practical necessity, not choice: I'd rather they did have sensors, but am not willing to go through the cargo cult to acquire and maintain them.

 

You can use external TPMS system, about $60 at Amazon (e.g., made by Meirun) . Each sensor screws on to each tire air valve stem. The monitor plugs into the cigarette lighter socket, which shows each tire air pressure and temp on the fly.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

My Advanced is two weeks old and I am from Iowa. Prime handles the snow surprisingly well. The OEM Nanoenergy tires are adequate. It's a low clearance vehicle, so wait for the plows to go by first. You will love the car. Congratulations.

 

Programmable TPMS sensors are available. You program the second set of sensors just like your originals so when you change wheels the car doesn't know the difference.

There are many other choices on Amazon.

 

nine months of winter and three months of damn poor sledding

 

So far so good. Month old owner with just 1K miles only so experience is limited. But here in NJ, we have gotten pretty soaked lately and had a decent snow storm a week or so ago. Overall impressed with how the Prime handled everything. The rain was not an issue at all - just dont go through any big standing water. As with comments above, with the snow - if I drive the prime, I will wait until the main roads are at least plowed. I also have a subaru forester so that would be my go to for any major winter driving.

 

Congrats on your new ride. I’m sure you’ll have an adventurous time with it.

I have dedicated snows and wheels for both my Prime and my wife’s Venza. The issue comes with stopping and turning, especially in slush or not yet plowed roads. The LRR tires show their weakness when it comes to that. We get about 120+ inches a year as we’re just south of the lake effect snow belt in CNY. The Prime cuts through the slush pretty good and handles extremely well but with snows its even better. Although we have TPMS on our all seasons, we don’t use them for the winters and just ignore the idiot light when it comes on. As with all things winter, I use my head, slow down and drive in slow motion.


Unsupervised!

 

Ordinary rain in Huntsville this afternoon and the dynamic cruise control worked perfectly. There were more BRAKE alarms but that has more to do with the quality of Huntsville drivers.

Bob Wilson

 

So we had a little snow this week...

 

[...20 hours later...]

Aw c'mon guys, nothing...?

Do all y'all drive primes where you get that much snow?