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So earlier in another post we reviewed a 2006 Prius we had bought and we didn’t have much to say because we had just got it, but now we have had some time to drive it on a long trip, and a lot around the city. The winter has now come down upon us and we have been driving it in the snow and in some extremely cold weather. We’ve been driving the Prius around in temperatures lower than 26 degrees C (which is -14.8 degrees F), so we have something to say about it’s handling in the ice and snow, as well as it’s interior climate controls in such frigid temperatures.

Driving a Prius in the snow is like any other front wheel drive car – you have to be careful you don’t drive into a snow drift, or any snow that has accumulated in grooves and ruts that have been developed over time during the cold winter months. Because the Prius is a front wheel drive car it handles itself quite well under slippery conditions like black ice. But the Prius has a couple of major advantages in winter driving that I want to talk about here today.

How The Prius Is For Heating (and keeping its heat)

The Prius has been simply amazing when it comes to keeping its heat in the interior where there is -26°C (-14°F) conditions. One thing that we both noticed when we were driving in cold weather was the lack of noisy fans blowing warm air into our faces, drying out our eyes, and making it uncomfortable during the drive. We don’t know why this is with the Prius, except that we really appreciate this comfort aspect. We do know from reading on the Internet, and reading the manual for the Prius, that the hybrid batteries are always putting off heat even when the car is turned off. Since the passengers are always basically sitting on a big battery, they can’t help but be affected by this, and we can tell that this is attributing to our comfort level in cold temperatures.

I was very concerned that the Prius would not be a good car for winter driving or any winter climate period. I noticed that the doors of the Prius were very thin (obviously for weight reasons) and I couldn’t imagine extreme temperatures in the minuses would be a good thing for the car, or for the passengers and the driver.

We are not engineers but we can only speculate, as I have above, why this car is so comfortable in cold weather. When we leave the car when it is -25°C, or even as low as -35°C, when we return after a couple of hours, it’s just not as cold as your traditional vehicle is. We can see in the backseat of the Prius, on the right-hand side, there is a small vent which they warn you in the service manual not to cover up. I don’t know what this vent is for but something is going on here. How can a car with thin doors hold its heat so well? I don’t know, but it does. This has been an extremely pleasant surprise as we live in Canada in the prairies, and we are deep in snow sometimes, and the temperatures fall well below 30°C periodically through the winter months.

Another thing we notice is that the car heats up quickly after we begin driving. Because the vehicle has not been completely cold soaked due to the big onboard batteries, the recovery time is less than any other vehicle we’ve ever owned in Canada. This is another plus that you get with the Prius. Sometimes we do have the fans on full blast, but then we set the climate control panel so that the fans are not blowing in our face, and instead blowing into our feet and into the windshield.

How The Prius Is For Cold Weather Starting

Because the Prius has a four-cylinder engine, and expertly designed by Toyota engineers, it is an easy engine to start in a cold soak condition. But, the Prius starts better than any other four-cylinder car I have ever been in during frigid winter temperatures. We chalk this up to modern engineering and the obvious advancements in engine design. Another factor with cold weather starting is the “thermos effect” that the Prius has. When you turn off a Prius, you will hear a strange sound under the hood for about 10 seconds or so, and that is hot water (radiater fluid) transferring from the engine into the thermos which is designed to keep the batteries warm. There is a heat exchanger affect between the fluid in the thermos and the batteries, and when the engine is asked to start again, all of this hot thermos fluid transfers back into the engine making a cold weather start easier.

Now, it is only fair to say that we really don’t know how the Prius starts in extreme cold weather conditions if it has been cold soaked all night long. Then you are dealing with the most extreme example of cold weather starting. While I suppose it’s not completely true, to correct myself – we did stay in Saskatoon one time when it was -25°C overnight. I have to say again though, when we woke up in the morning and got into the car it was frigid cold for sure, but we touched the brake at the same time we touched the start button and there was not even a hiccup when the Prius came back to life. Within five minutes after starting we drove away and within five minutes after driving we were comfortable again. I have driven big Chevrolet Caprice cars, big GMC trucks, and big Ford sedans that took way longer to heat up in idle and in initial driving.

Because of the small four-cylinder engine, the small capacity, along with the new Toyota technology, and the thermos technology in the Prius, it makes for a most impressive cold weather starting vehicle.

How The Prius Is On Fuel Consumption In Cold Weather

We have noticed that the Prius doesn’t do quite as well in the frigid temperatures when it comes to gas mileage. We lose about 7 miles per gallon when the temperature is -20° and below (we are still talking Celsius here) this is to be expected, and there is no way of getting around this aspect. There is no amount of smart engineering that will fix the increased fuel consumption aspect of a combustion engine during cold soak conditions. There is not much more you can say about this, except that because of Toyota’s hybrid technology, the Prius is going to be a heck of a lot cheaper on gas than any other car on the planet (well, at least at the time of this writing).

The Prius In Icy Conditions

The Prius has all-speed traction control, coupled with its ABS (automatic braking system) system which works together very well. I don’t trust any vehicle on wheels in winter conditions, so I will start by saying that. No matter what you are driving you need to be cautious, and this goes the same with the Prius. I tested our Prius out on some open roads and in some parking lots to get a feel for how it responds when it is sliding and slipping on ice/snow. It had a very quick recovery rate – I would have to say better than many vehicles I have driven in the past. The traction control system does have a light that illuminates when it senses a wheel has lost traction, but you see this light a brief second after you have already lost traction, so it’s not really that big of a deal in respect to being alerted of an unsafe condition. You can feel when you’ve lost traction and you simply have to back off. Now I would like to talk about a very special safety feature the Prius has that I’m not sure Toyota engineers realized they incorporated (oh, who am I kidding? – they must’ve known this).

The Prius’ B Gear For Stopping On Slippery Roads

As all Prius owners know, there are four different positions for the small electronic gear shifter which is mounted on the dash, or in the console depending on what year your Prius is. There is the reverse position, drive position, neutral position, and the all-important B position. The idea of the B position on the shifter is fantastic. The Toyota marketing teams point out that this was engineered so that when you are going downhill in your Prius you can shift the shifter into the B position and it will do two things – one, it will begin to slow you down without the use of breaks, and two, it will begin to charge your battery up much faster due to the kinetic energy that is created from the movement of the wheels going downhill. So what we have here is a car that gears down like a standard transmission would, if you were a good enough driver to save your brakes by shifting down all the time when you need to slow down, instead of using your brakes.

The big deal with the Prius is that you never have to use a clutch, and this little shifter is so handy and close to your hand. All you do is gently tap the shifter down into the B position and the car begins to slow down without the use of brakes. In slippery conditions this is FANTASTIC! Saving brakes is one thing, but saving your life or a fender bender is an entirely different thing. When you are driving along and you discover that you are on black ice, or extremely slippery conditions, the last thing you want to do is slam on your brakes, and we all know this from experience – right? This is why drivers who have a lot of experience driving in icy winter conditions in the past have always learned to shift down their transmission to slow the vehicle instead of using their brakes. This is why many Canadians (and other people living in colder climates) often opt to have vehicles with standard transmissions, or least automatic transmissions with a gear down option, to slow their vehicles without the use of brakes.

We have thoroughly enjoyed this feature of the shift mechanism in the Prius to the B position, as I have been very light on our brakes, and it has reduced my nerves in icy conditions. I use it all the time without even thinking about it now when I want to stop fairly soon, or at least slow the vehicle down in a hurry – and it really does slow down the Prius in a hurry when you shift into the “B gear”.

We Recommend The Prius For Winter Conditions

So all in all, we highly recommend the Prius for driving in winter conditions. We bought our 2006 Prius for $20,000 in late 2009 and we can’t really comment on the new Prius’. We do know that the technology of the newer Prius models is as good, or better, when it comes to the sytems I have described in this post.

Tags: canada, cold, conditions, driving, hybrid, icy, prius, snow, traction, weather, winter

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