Trying to break an old habit.

Actually I was really disappointed that on the Prius there is no "intelligent" oil change/service indication. In the EU version there is not even a "calendar" dumb indication...
Why this choice? what are they saving here at Toyota? just making additional useless versions of display software...
Regarding first oil change - if they say 15000 I stick to it. If the engine breaks before hand because I changed the oil the first time when they told me to, and not any earlier, or the second time they used 5W-30 (without asking me), well, next time is not going to be Toyota. Simple.
Regarding the fact that 9k miles is less than the 10k in US, I think it has more to do with "psychology" than anything else. 15k is better than 16090km (or 16k for that matter) - and yes, they make money more quickly...(1k per year faster) but we tend to drive less km/year on average in EU, so I think at the end it is about the same. The 1 year interval would kick in first in any case.

 

Bisco, your post motivated me to do a careful search, & then take another look at my dipstick in daylight. I did not like what I saw.

My first oil will occur next weekend. Wish I'd had the foresight to listen to the experts yesterday -- I wouldn't have been talked out of my first oil change so easily. Live & learn

Jim's Dipstick at 3104mi, car purchased 12/9/10:

 

i think you'll be fine.

 

Dark colored oil is not necessarily bad. It doesn't look "dirty" to me. Dirty oil would be non-translucent and possibly even slightly sludgy.

 

Regardless, Toyota Canada's interval is still 5000 mile. And the US interval just switched from 5000 to 10000, in the last year or two, I believe. Even if the factory oil was a special break-in oil, it used to do it's job in 5000 miles.

 

What errant chips? If there were any they immediately got caught by the filter.

 

That's what I was thinking, my car came with an oil filter. Back in the olden daze when cars only had bypass filters or no filter, early and frequent changes made sense.

An early change still might help an unmeasurable amount because the filters don't filter everything out, but I don't think the miniscule stuff that does get past the filter matters much.

A Prius transmission is a different matter because they don't have filters.