I am currently a resident of Iowa. I am planning to buy my first car, to use it for commute and will be occasionally travelling to Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan and Massachusetts. Considering this, is an AWD car necessary in snowy conditions or a FWD car will do just fine? Thanks
I do delivery driving in upstate new york, from hudson valley into the catskill mountains. I have an awd toyota matrix.
On flat lands, I never need awd. In the mountains and hills I almost never need it either. The one time I did was a driveway that was super steep, and most people couldn't make it up it, and he said be careful on the way down because some people slid off the driveway into a huge ditch. I needed the awd because I actually slipped some, if I didn't have it I may not have made it. It came in handy a couple other times, but almost always 2wd is plenty good.
That was a rare case you almost never run into.
Most places take care of their roads and make sure they don't have ice on them, or not much.
As @imperator mentioned, you will want to get good tires. When it gets full winter here, I change to my nokian Hakkapellitta's, nordic winter tires. AWD mainly helps to get you moving forward, but it doesn't help you to stop, or provide more traction on an icy road.
A 2wd car with good winter tires will do far better than an awd car with all season tires. With that being said, if you are in a bad area that doesn't salt well, you may want to get awd.
One of the most important things, is knowing how to drive for the conditions, because Even the best awd car with the best winter tires can only help so much.
When I am driving around in nasty winter conditions, the thing that scares me the most is people that don't know how to drive in it, and are going too fast, or are slamming on their brakes.
If you live in a major city and only drive paved roads then you're probably fine with 2wd and good tires. But talk to your fellow drivers in your area and see what they say.
people that don't know how to drive in it, and are going too fast,
there's a few of those, but there's a lot more people who crap their pants when it snows, and completely forget how to drive, and go about 12mph. Sometimes you NEED speed.
For sure, and people slamming their brakes on as soon as they loose any traction. I saw a camera on a bridge with a curve on it, you would see brake lights, and then instant spin out.
A 2wd car with good winter tires will do far better than an awd car with all season tires.
until one front tire loses traction, and then your 2wd suddenly becomes 1wd and one wheel cannot provide enough torque to get the car moving.
It is extremely difficult to get stuck with an AWD powertrain.
I agree that awd with the same tires as 2wd is going to be much better at getting you unstuck, and for accelerating. With snow, and especially ice, winter tires provide more grip on the tire getting you going, but also provide much better traction while driving, and braking. AWD doesn't help much with driving down the road, or when braking as far as I know.
Here are some interesting comparisons.
It was interesting on the hill showing how the winter tires did against all season, getting going up a hill, and braking going down a hill. This one wasn't even showing real winter tires, they were all weather, not quite winter tires.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N6PGrQ5imw
This one is on a flat ice track. Really shows the grip difference in the different types of tires.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl96EA1uNPA&t=1021s
The only ones I saw that the all season did better was when they were using trucks, but that seems a bit of an unfair comparison as the trucks had no weight on the back.