Depends where you live with lots of snow. If you’re not emergency personnel and you live in a major metropolitan area with good salting and plowing? You absolutely do not need AWD. If you’re like in the GTA or the Chicago sprawl you’ll be fine - make sure to pick up your groceries the day before the blizzard. Any day where the roads are bad-enough to need an all-terrain vehicle, everything will be closed anyways. The only urban places I’d be tempted by AWD would be the Prairies Provinces, where they sometimes get snow below -10C (usually it’s bone dry here in Ontario when it gets below -10C) and salt can’t melt that so they just dump in some grit and hope. At least it’s pretty flat there.
However, if you live rural? Absolutely. My in-laws live in a hilly rural area and I’ve tried visiting them in an FWD minivan in the winter. Do not recommend.
Depends where you live with lots of snow. If you’re not emergency personnel and you live in a major metropolitan area with good salting and plowing? You absolutely do not need AWD. If you’re like in the GTA or the Chicago sprawl you’ll be fine - make sure to pick up your groceries the day before the blizzard. Any day where the roads are bad-enough to need an all-terrain vehicle, everything will be closed anyways. The only urban places I’d be tempted by AWD would be the Prairies Provinces, where they sometimes get snow below -10C (usually it’s bone dry here in Ontario when it gets below -10C) and salt can’t melt that so they just dump in some grit and hope. At least it’s pretty flat there.
However, if you live rural? Absolutely. My in-laws live in a hilly rural area and I’ve tried visiting them in an FWD minivan in the winter. Do not recommend.
I’ve needed AWD in Houston in the summer to get up driveways because of a thin film of oil or some gravel.
And rural driveawys in hilly areas.