Here's my story. About 4 years ago, we had the worst bout of ice in the 16 years that we've lived in Colorado. It was warm and sunny in the morning, over 50 degrees, but then got much colder and started snowing. The snow melted, but as the temperature continued to get colder, it refroze into solid ice covering all the roads in the area. Since I live in a hilly area, this was not good. I was driving my 5 month old Model 3 LR AWD with fairly fresh Sottozero 3s on it. I was going to pick up my son from school since they had decided to close early due to the snow and rapidly worsening driving conditions.
I turned onto the road out of our development, which is one lane in each direction to see cars off the side of the road or stuck unable to move in the middle of the road both up and down the hill. Down the hill the road was completely blocked on both sides in multiple places, so I decided to try up the hill. To get around the cars sitting sideways or unable to move in the middle of the road, I had to weave my way between them on both sides of the road and the shoulder. The Tesla did fine. The only close call was one truck that was slowly sliding down the hill in my direction with his brakes locked. He wasn't doing more than 2 or 3 MPH, but he couldn't stop until he got to a more level spot. I had to back down the hill about 30 feet to avoid him.
Many of the roads in the area were blocked due to cars stuck all over them. I had to take a rather roundabout route to the school, so it was about 7 miles rather than the usual 4. All along the way there were cars and trucks scattered all over the road and off the sides of the road. I saw at least 200 cars stuck on and off the road in the 30 to 40 minutes it took me to drive 7 miles. The only other scary moment was when one car was sliding sideways down a hill in my direction in slow motion; fortunately, there was a side road I could turn on to before that car got to me.
When I got to the school, I ended up picking up my son, and a few of his friends whose parents weren't able to make it to the school. We couldn't go back up to the hilly areas, since all the roads in that direction were closed by then, so we stayed on the flatter areas and went to Chick-fil-A for a little lunch. After a couple hours of plowing and sanding and clearing vehicles out of the way, the police started opening up the roads again, and we were able to make it home.
The Model 3 worked very well with the Sottozero 3s, and those aren't as good in the snow as either X-Ice or Blizzaks, both of which I've had on other cars. I think the only thing that will stop an AWD Model 3 on good snow tires is when the snow gets deep enough that you just can't plow any deeper snow. From experience, I'd say that occurs when the snow is an inch or two higher than the front spoiler.
