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Comment by phil21 | Hacker News Reader

AWD is a luxury outside of the most extreme of extreme locations.

I grew up in Minnesota driving rear wheel drive cars to start. They worked fine even in the olden days where plows would take a couple days to clear the country backroads and even rock salt was applied sparingly due to the expense.

Not a single one of my vehicles had winter tires - all seasons were perfectly serviceable. You’d get stuck once in a great while but that’s what the bag of sand and shovel in the trunk were for.

Front wheel drive came along and made it easy mode.

All wheel drive is certainly something I love these days, but it’s an extreme luxury that makes winter driving laughably easy.

A basic utilitarian work vehicle does not need to be 4WD in 90% or likely even 99% of use cases anywhere in the country.

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>AWD is a luxury outside of the most extreme of extreme locations.

Only in the most strictly technical "I'm not touching you" sense.

Either AWD/4wd is necessary-ish when you're going to other people's property because you can't guarantee any given property isn't an icy shithole and when you're a professional being paid by them to be there for a specific purpose the last thing you wanna do is slip out trying to do a 25-point turn on their stupid sloped driveway and put a tire in the landscaping.

Even if it's some megacorp's facility that "should" be plowed and salted, it might not be when you show up at 6am on the dot to service something.

>I grew up in Minnesota driving rear wheel drive cars to start. They worked fine even in the olden days where plows would take a couple days to clear the country backroads and even rock salt was applied sparingly due to the expense.

>Not a single one of my vehicles had winter tires - all seasons were perfectly serviceable. You’d get stuck once in a great while but that’s what the bag of sand and shovel in the trunk were for.

I completely agree but the past isn't coming back. Those standards of performance are unfortunately no longer acceptable, especially in business settings.

There are exceptions, like to everything in life. They just aren't really that interesting to discuss when talking about trends and averages.

The average contractor servicing suburban and exurban properties in a work van is going to be able to trivially navigate 95% of all snowfalls with FWD with a modicum of winter driving skills. It's just not that hard, and very few places get the type of snow that requires a fully off road capable vehicle.

If I lived in the mountains of Colorado and servicing ranches or something of course I'd be buying for those conditions. But a standard city in the northern US or Canada? Meh. Total waste of money for a fleet vehicle. These sorts of locations are where something like 99% of all vehicle miles are put on.

For personal use now that I can afford it? AWD is on all my vehicles. It's a magical technology since it allows turning your brain off, and making some situations comically easy to navigate. But I'm not optimizing for cost efficiency or practicality there - I'm optimizing for luxury and convenience.

>If I lived in the mountains of Colorado and servicing ranches or something of course I'd be buying for those conditions. But a standard city in the northern US or Canada? Meh. Total waste of money for a fleet vehicle. These sorts of locations are where something like 99% of all vehicle miles are put on.

I'm not talking about places that can be written off because "the boonies are a rounding error".

I'm talking about some guy who owns a plumbing business in Boston and wants to reduce the number of days per year that conditions make things sketchy. $3k per truck or $4k per van is absolutely chump change compared to the PITA of having to add more buffer to winter scheduling to account for delays and inconvenience.

>for personal use now that I can afford it? AWD is on all my vehicles. It's a magical technology since it allows turning your brain off, and making some situations comically easy to navigate. But I'm not optimizing for cost efficiency or practicality there - I'm optimizing for luxury and convenience.

Baffling that someone who readily admits that "you can turn your brain off" doesn't see why people who either have to drive their own work vehicle every day, or put a vehicle in the hands of an employee wouldn't value that even higher.

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