Are you sure you are using it correctly? With TC you have to floor to make it work properly if you are trying to be smooth or careful with throttle it will suck.
You talked about a Merc, on that if you don't have ASR on you don't have diff "lock" either. Merc don't use mechanical locks and instead they use ESP to get the a similar effect and it works great. E-class and C-class both won big 4x4 winter tests on Auto, Motor und Sport magazine. There were all sorts of 4x4 cars like BMW, Volvo, Audi, Porsche and so on.
Why would there be a minimum speed for traction control? Other than the initial launch of an F1 car, where traction control is iniitally disabled, but is enabled and remains enabled once the car has reached 100kph just once, I'm not aware of any form of racing where traction control is allowed but has a minimum speed.
Traction control at lower speeds is more important than at higher speeds. At higher speeds, the rear wheel torque is less due to running in a higher gear, and in the case of downforce cars, more grip.
Unless you either have really short gearing, a very broad power spread, or highly abuse resistant clutch - if you don't have any wheelspin off the line then the engine is not revving high enough to make good power. Full traction at 4000rpm is going to put less power to the ground in the sauber than a slipping wheel, for instance.
I didn't mean to apply when launching, but more on that below. How often is a turn on a track so slow that you're below the power band in first gear on any car?
It makes sense when taking off in some cases, but note that the traction control systems in racing cars are designed to allow optimal slippange instead of none, and I would assume that the cars speed is taken into account (as with the earlier launch control in F1 race cars). In Indy Racing League cars, the driver can adjust the slippage factor of the traction control system while racing.
How TC would actually work is really different car to car. For instance, some earlier range rovers with TCs struggle in snow as TC basially tries to stop ALL wheelspin. On the contrary, the current TC and stability control on the latest model Pajero works wonders. A combination of better hardware and software. For the Pajero, the TC map changes once you shift to 4HLc or 4LLc (center diff locked).
Of corse, this is somewhat oversimplified, but the secrert to making TC work well is to allow some limited wheelspin, just enough to get going smoothly, without letting things out of control. With gyroscopic yaw snensors, the vehicle could be made to move well in snow wilst still allowing reasonable directional control.
Of corse, there's no substitue for 4WD and studded tires if maximum snow performance is required from a 4 wheeled car.
As the saying goes, you can't just fix all hardware problems with sotware.
I wasn't talking about 4WD skips, I was referring to powerful real wheel drive saloons. I won't own a 4WD car for as long as I own 4 limbs and a head of my own, even if I lived on a glacier. On the road I'm never looking for 'maximum performance'. Besides, something like a Stratos (for rallying references) is going to be nearly as quick and WAY more fun than ANY 4WD CAR EVER MADE
But the point is you take a statement, ignore the context, and then write an answer to a question that was never made, and you ALWAYS do this (except once when you contributed to a thread brilliantly, but that was an exception).
