I’m going to say it’s the Bridgestone 20″ tyres, I had them on my previous Ateca and they were worse than useless on that, so bad I never went out in any amount of snow with it.
The GTE came on Bridgestones (18″ though) – and can confirm, absolutely worthless tyre. Ignoring the fact that grip was awful, and braking performance sub-par – they only lasted for 3500 miles, too.
KF fitted Sport Contact 7 on the first change (again: after 3500 miles) in the front, day and night.
That all being said: you’re driving a torque monster in icy conditions. It’s kind of a no-brainer that you have to be more careful with the pedals than with a 150hp front scratcher.
72 Dudes is almost universally correct with his statement, 99% of people who argue that they need AWD, really don’t. Contrary to what some people here believe, they don’t make the car safer to drive in the wet, better in corners, or accelerate better (this one is largely due to us not reaching power-levels where an AWD would matter). The one thing they do do, is reduce range for no objective reason.
I’ll be having my first icy drive in a minute, to the in-laws, curious to see how Pirelli P-Zero handle this (the E-variant) on an RWD. Considering that i already had it “dance” in a wet roundabout recently, at what i (apparently mistakenly) considered a not excessive amount of throttle.. It’ll be entertaining. We do live at the bottom of a hill too.
Prior: SEAT Ateca Xcellence Lux 1.5 TSI DSG MY19, VW Golf GTE PHEV DSG MY23
Current: Hyundai Ioniq 6 Ultimate
Next: we'll see what's available in 2028.