While we weren't allowed to take the FWD Prius over the hill, we had the chance to take it around the rest of the track a number of times. With a little bit of effort, we could get the Prius to understeer a smidge on the loose surfaces. With enough gusto, we could overcome the nannies and get it to plow more aggressively while cornering through the snow, though it resisted the urge better than we had expected.
In the AWD-e, we headed for the snow hill first. We stopped completely on the icy incline. After a moment, we put our foot into the throttle. The Prius paused a half beat, then slowly pulled up and away. It built speed slowly with smoothness and linearity as it climbed, and kept its nose pointed straight as it crested the small but steep hill. We repeated this exercise multiple times that day, and each time was the same: steady, smooth and undramatic.
We flogged the poor little Prius harder with every lap of the course. Each uneventful pass through the snow slalom had us taking it a little faster through the slippery curves. On many of the laps, a brave man waited on the outside of a curve with a snowblower to replace the white stuff we displaced as we passed. We could hear the quiet, muffled clicking as the stability control worked its magic, but weren't able to push the Prius AWD-e into understeer — the higher cornering speeds it allowed over the standard model meant crossing that threshold could've potentially meant a bad day for snowblower guy. Or perhaps not at all, depending on how well the car could recover. We weren't willing to find out; we'll save that test for an empty parking lot.
And that's was when the Prius AWD-e really began to make more sense to us, despite our affinity for snow tires. With all-wheel drive, the car mostly felt the same as any other Prius. It wasn't adding any huge, tangible change in driving behavior. What it does is subtle and demonstrates itself as a
lack of the negatives you'd otherwise notice: slip, instability, hesitation, understeer. That adds up to confidence. And it's confidence you can appreciate without having to sacrifice much in fuel economy.
The majority of drivers never make the switch to snow tires in the winter, whether because of its added cost, a matter of storage space or an issue of fuel economy. Many of them would rather just have all-wheel drive. For them, there's now a Prius option.
