Wanted to share my experience, on the first day of truly crappy ~30F weather, with slush, sleet, ice, black ice, snow, and otherwise miserable potluck winter weather. Y'know, the kind that you REALLY want a AWD vehicle to drive in.
In a nutshell: my Tesla did everything I expected it to do... it performed at least as well - if not better- than my former Audi Quattro on a miserable mix of poor friction roads. The ABS worked very nicely when stomping hard on the brakes, to bring the car to a controlled stop; the car accelerated smoothly under low and medium power with no noticeable slip (e.g any lasting longer than a few milliseconds) . Did not do a hard Launch just for safety sake, but given a proper area or need, the car certainly would have tried. Bravo, Tesla, bravo. I have an all year car electric car now!
This was with the standard all-weather tires on 19" rims. I assume it would be even better with specialized winter tires*... our first 4"+ snowfall is supposed to come next week, so will test it under heavy snow load then.
Which brings up an interesting question... if I raise the car (via air suspsension) for some reason (e.g. to get out of my alley without bottoming out the car) is there some way to get it to "forget" the event so it doesn't always try to do it again each time?
Also: despite previous reservations, the "stock" all-weather floor mats (the lesser grade WeatherTech ones sold from Tesla directly) seemed to contain the mess from shoes nicely.
Also: didn't know there was a UPPER limit on discharge on the battery when cold, too... just thought it limited regen braking, but it also limited accelleration too... was around ~ 300KW IIRC, and disappeared a lot quicker than the regen limit did as the car warmed.
*Did not feel the need to drain my wallet further for a special tire set. It does not snow THAT much in Chicago... or at least not without Snowmageddon happening.
In a nutshell: my Tesla did everything I expected it to do... it performed at least as well - if not better- than my former Audi Quattro on a miserable mix of poor friction roads. The ABS worked very nicely when stomping hard on the brakes, to bring the car to a controlled stop; the car accelerated smoothly under low and medium power with no noticeable slip (e.g any lasting longer than a few milliseconds) . Did not do a hard Launch just for safety sake, but given a proper area or need, the car certainly would have tried. Bravo, Tesla, bravo. I have an all year car electric car now!
This was with the standard all-weather tires on 19" rims. I assume it would be even better with specialized winter tires*... our first 4"+ snowfall is supposed to come next week, so will test it under heavy snow load then.
Which brings up an interesting question... if I raise the car (via air suspsension) for some reason (e.g. to get out of my alley without bottoming out the car) is there some way to get it to "forget" the event so it doesn't always try to do it again each time?
Also: despite previous reservations, the "stock" all-weather floor mats (the lesser grade WeatherTech ones sold from Tesla directly) seemed to contain the mess from shoes nicely.
Also: didn't know there was a UPPER limit on discharge on the battery when cold, too... just thought it limited regen braking, but it also limited accelleration too... was around ~ 300KW IIRC, and disappeared a lot quicker than the regen limit did as the car warmed.
*Did not feel the need to drain my wallet further for a special tire set. It does not snow THAT much in Chicago... or at least not without Snowmageddon happening.