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Weight is actually a good thing in the snow. Too light of a vehicle and it's hard to get any traction without something like tracks.
The struggling in the snow is most likely an issue of tires. If someone put some all terrain or ideally snow tires, I'm sure it'd do significantly better.
But it can't afford to run less efficient tires because it has too much air resistance and the range would suffer. There's a reason why other Teslas have no flat panels or straight lines.
It's a 100,000 vehicle with plastic hubcaps.
I don't disagree with that at all, it's a dumb vehicle no matter how you slice it and this debacle only furthers the proof. If it needs low rolling resistance, highway tires, then it's just a street queen for elon fanboys.
Most SUVs and Trucks now are pavement princesses. I respect the hell out of people who buy minivans now.
Yay, finally someone respects me. :)
Our minivan is older and doesn't have AWD, but it's heavy and is much safer than our sedan in the snow. I think it's incredibly funny when I do a dump run in my minivan and have more stuff than most of the pickups. In one load, I had: 2 mattresses, 3 bicycles, a mini fridge, a TV, some broken down furniture, and a bag or two of odds and ends (ran out of stuff to throw away). I've done multiple furniture store runs, hardware store runs, etc, and it works great, just fold the seats down and I basically have a truck bed.
A minivan won't do everything a truck does, but it does what most truck people want a truck for, and it can move people a lot better. New minivans also have hybrid engines and AWD, so they get fantastic gas mileage and can handle mountain passes for ski runs.
They're seriously so convenient and if I had kids I'd be more interested in them than anything else.
I have three kids, and we're debating getting another van vs a smaller car like a Subaru Outback or Rav4. The minivan is super convenient, but we almost never need more than five seats. It'll mostly be for camping and road trips, and we could do that with our other car (Prius) if my youngest's car seat would fit.
Lol I'd feel bad for the kid who had to ride the middle seat in the Prius. I always hated riding in the back of my parents car after I got my height and my head was against the ceiling and my legs had to straddle the seat in front of me. But more recently in the back of a minivan and it was seriously comfortable.
Yup, and that's why we got the minivan when number 3 came along. We were looking at wider SUVs when my brother upgraded his minivan and offered to sell us the old one.
It turns out, neither of us like driving the larger car, and I'm tall (6'3", 1.9m). If station wagons with a third row were still available (even a jump seat), we'd get it, but the only cars with a third row are super huge.
Now it's time to upgrade and we're looking again, and the middle seat is absolutely a consideration. We'll probably get the minivan again because it's so practical, but we'd both prefer to drive the Prius (which we'll probably replace with an EV once prices come down). If there was hybrid alternative (better range for road trips; we frequently go well over 600 miles in a day) to the Tesla Model S (i.e. jump seats), I'd get that instead. But AFAIK, that doesn't exist in sedans, and the only small-ish SUV is a Kia, and they have crappy reliability.
Weight alone doesn't help. It matters where the weight is. On a rear wheel drive vehicle it absolutely does help with traction and handling if you add more weight on the rear axle. People have been hauling sandbags on their truck beds/trunks in the winter for ages for a good reason.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
absolutely does help
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