Safety tech in cars has come a long way. We used to rely mostly on cruise control as an “automation” that merely locked the car into a set speed. These days, automations like lane-keeping and automatic steering are becoming more and more common, even in budget cars. Yet, there’s safety tech in the 2025 Hyundai Tucson that is worth noting for an entirely different reason: It keeps you firmly planted on the road, even in the snow.
Up here in Minnesota, in the frozen wasteland, having a driving mode that helps in snow is ultra important. I happened to test the Tucson during a time when the snow was coming down fast and furious. I set the drive mode to snow and found the vehicle didn’t slip and slide at all.
Part of the reason is that the system analyzes traction every .02 second to monitor tire slip. When there’s any slip, the traction control can send power to the front and rear wheels at different levels, depending on what is happening with the vehicle. For example, if the front tires are hitting some ice, the torque is transferred more to the back to help propel you forward.
Snow mode also limits the RPMs, and I could feel this distinctly during my drive. There’s a corner by our house that is also sloped downward. I gunned it a little to see if the Tuscon would fish-tail, but the tires adjusted their speed and kept moving me forward. Usually, older cars would not be able to maintain the direction and start spinning out.
At faster speeds, the Snow mode maintained a straight direction even with about three inches of snow accumulating on the road. There wasn’t ice build-up yet, but the snow was packed on the road and thick. I felt confident the entire time without a concern that the vehicle would slip on the road — somewhat thanks to the snow tires, of course.
In other tests, I turned off snow mode just to see if there was a big difference. On the same corner by my house, the sport mode tended to cause more tire slip although I wasn’t pushing it enough on the accelerator to cause an actual fish tail.
Hyundai lets you tweak the drive modes a little (see the image below). You can adjust the power train so that there’s more power, saves fuel, or normal for everyday driving. You can also tweak the steering using normal mode or sport. In sport mode, it’s tighter and has a more responsive feel. While I was testing snow mode, I left both settings on normal.
I test a lot of cars and some are better than others in snow.
I liked how easy it was to adjust the drive mode using one button. In the dash above the steering wheel, you can select the drive mode you want and Hyundai adds a little snowflake icon to remind you which mode you’ve selected.
During my tests, I thought it would have been nice to have a display that shows what is happening with snow mode as you drive, although I can see how that might cause distraction. At slow speeds, at least a pop-up showing how the power is transferring from front to rear would have been handy. As it is, snow mode is a godsend — it made my day less eventful.