Driving electric on packed snow - review

[Josephus]

Overall I was very surprised and impressed.

Portland, OR: 2-4 inches of powdery and packed snow. 2/6-2/7. 20 degrees F -ish. Drove 30 miles home after work with wife and 3 year old asleep in back, and then drove 30 miles back to work by myself this morning.

Starting from a stop:
Lots of slipping (stock tires, no chains or studs). Found it best to allow the car to coast foward and then with momentum, to very slowly ease on the "juice" pedal. Had slight drift left and right, but not into another lane.

Traction at speed (25mph-55mph):
Very good. Traction control was frequently automatically employed (showing the little light), but I always felt in control and stayed in my intended direction with no drift. One time I noticed loss of traction with the steering wheel, but it quickly came back, and still no real sideways drift.

Stopping:
Fairly good - never felt unsafe. Antilock breaks kicked in at a few red lights, and I probably crossed a submerged white line by a little at least once. The handling at speed is so responsive and confident that it is easy to assume smaller stopping range than snow requires. The pusling breaks did stop me a lot sooner than I would have with broken traction.

Realizations:

* Blink chargers take much longer to charge in very cold temps. Took an hour to get 10 miles.

* Car wouldn't blow heat through the vents while it was charging. This needs to be fixed.

* I actually got slightly better range because of stop and go traffic. Less windresistance I suspect.

* Should have planned enough range to keep the defroster on nearly continously. Windshield would fog over after just a minute or two.

* It actually was a fun adventure to test the car in the snow. I'm fairly comfortable driving in snow though.

* Even with a back heavy battery and a torqy motor, it preformed much better than anticipated. Would like to see battery weight more evenly distributed in the future.

 

[jmueller065]

I've found the car very surefooted in all conditions. So far here in Southeastern Michigan my FFE has seen just about everything winter can throw at it and I've been able to slog through it all (even when my wife got our ICE Focus stuck in the snow, and three commercial jets got stuck in the snow at the local airport).
On very slippery surfaces (e.g. ice) I've found that it doesn't matter how much go pedal you give it--the car will just go as fast as traction allows, but as soon as it finds even the tiniest bit of grip..zoom you're off.
On Tuesday we got another 6" of snow--I drove the FFE anyway knowing that it could handle it. On my commute in I found SUV's and Jeeps following me! LOL

 

[unplugged]

* Car wouldn't blow heat through the vents while it was charging. This needs to be fixed.

I don't know much about driving in the snow with the FFE (living in Southern California), but I wondered about the vents needing to blow heat or are you referring to not using the heater during charging? You do have to turn the car on in order use the heater. To do this, you have to use the brake as if starting the car. Then you can use the heater. Or, if you start the car remotely using the phone app, and have the temperature set at 80 or so, the car will preheat.

But not sure if you were just referring to the heat coming out the vents.

 

[Focused_Driver]

This car continues to impress.

I usually drive a Prius which does okay in the slippery stuff.

I have driven the FFE several times the last two days in all the snow in the Portland, OR area. It does like to slip a bit when starting out because of how quickly Ford makes all that torque available, but in all other situations acts as I would expect. You can tell how evenly weighted the car is by how well it tracks. If I swapped the stock tires for studded ones, I bet it would be incredibly sure footed.

I would appreciate Ford creating a mode to detune the accelerator pedal a bit. This would help reduce unintentionally high acceleration rates. Come on you Ford engineers, it's just a bit of programming and a new setting on the interface.

I would say I feel the FFE outperforms the Prius in the slippery stuff in most aspects.

 

[hcsharp]

The FFE is excellent in snow and ice with the right tires. I also pass SUVs when they're losing traction on a regular basis, although it's not as good as my son's Subaru All-Track. The traction control is WAY more responsive than the gas Focus, and much better than the Prius which just gives up sometimes. We had a gas Focus here last week while our FFE was in the shop and ... wow what a difference.

 

[MNEV]

Overall the FFE has handled the Minnesota winter driving well. The traction control takes some getting used to. You should learn how to turn it the traction control off. There are times when you need to tires to spin to negotiate an un-shoved driveway, unplowed street or a plowed in parking spot. Being at a stop and having the traction control kicking on is not helpful.

 

[hcsharp]

My wife drove through 8" of snow today most of the way to work. She could feel it under the car. Since she was basically plowing snow the whole time, sometimes it came up over the bumper and just kind of flowed over the windshield, forcing her to slow to a crawl. It's better than any front-wheel-drive car we've ever owned. She said the gas Focus we had last week, which had traction control, would never have made it.

 

[markminnc]

Not much experience driving in snow or ice here in Wilmington NC. Home late from a business trip last month had two of us driving into Wilm at about midnight. Ice storms had about shut the city down. Pulled into the office parking lot and it looked just like an ice rink. Took about a half hour to scrape a large enough opening in the windshield and two side windows to see out. Set off for home wondering if the car would make it out of the parking lot. I have a 23 mile commute and kept my speed under 35 but made it home without issue. Not much traffic around here after midnight, but, that night I saw a total of 3 other cars on the road during my trip.