Why hybrid actually need shorter oil change intervals

For gen 3, Toyota Canada said every 8k kms (~5k miles) or 6 months, and Toyota USA said 10k miles or 12 months, whichever comes first. Same engine.

For the excusers: 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border. And there's North Dakota, oh, and Alaska.

Short trips ARE bad: I try to avoid them as much as possible. We're only driving maybe once a week, typically at least 50 km, sometimes closer to a 100. We'll let the major shopping build-up, and try to catch it on the same day as the lengthy drive.

I'm changing the oil on ours once a year now, due to mostly to our extremely low, yearly use, only about 3k kms on average now. Car lives on a battery maintainer too, lol.

 

If you don't take your car on at least a few 100 mile round trip runs a month - I would concur. This is no different than grandma driving her ICE to church every Sunday on a 3 mile round trip. Those looking for a low mileage older car beware!!! If they have the maintenance records; pay attention to how often (dates) the service was done. If they're a couple of years apart, you know what happened. While everything was done at the proper mileage interval; the time interval was ignored. Check the date codes on those tires and your canned foods lately???

 

When I had Prius:

• Late Spring - gets winter condensed stuff out
• Late Autumn- gets summer dust and stuff out

Bob Wilson

 

with low mileage, i did mine every spring

 

Mine gets 5k miles oil and 30k miles coolant. It's not so much mileage or time; it's not about additives wearing out; it's oil contamination issues.

 

Yep, short engine run times will fuel soak your oil - that's why you need to do a long freeway run, ICE on for at least 20 minutes consistently to burn that out. Note: the motor will shut-off on the highway, when you coast.

 

^THAT!!

^.....except temperature differentials and acid are a '365-thing.'

Actually?
This isn't rocket science.
It isn't even high school math.

RTFM.
(READ the....*um.....'factory' manual.)



Toyota 'recommends' that you change the oil every 10K for both their wireless AND their PHEV Priuses.
I think that this is a little 'long' but that's ME being ME.

Most people who buy new G5s (or most ANY PHEV) will not keep it past the extended warranty period for their car.
If I bought a new car TODAY I'd reduce the oil change periodicities to 5K and keep on being me.

MY mileage.
YOURS will probably vary.

 

WoW; never done injection cleaner every 5K miles............ I'm and island onto myself........

I'm a bad, bad boy

 

Didn't get that far down into the list.
Yota has P R and I items in their list and they try to make it fairly 'fool resistant.'
HOWEVER (comma!!!!!)

NOTHING is fool PROOF!

 

I tend to generally disagree with the time interval, I think it's more dependent on your driving conditions. You can look at the oil to see if it's getting dark / dirty. And an occasional oil sample test is even possible to set up a baseline. In the diesel world you can get up to 20K miles with a bypass filter. There was an Acura Integra with 1 million miles, a long distance courier. He had 10 timing belt changes and 7 clutches, don't think he was changing the oil every 5000.

 

I'm pretty sure he 'stretched' those belt changes (pun intended). The first gen was 80K and later reduce to 60K - I had one of those and the belt broke around 70K. Negotiated a free extended mileage warranty package, since this was the second year that model was in service - the timing belt wasn't covered!! I was lucky to do the 65K mile maintenance at 68K miles - that included the belt check. Since they were a new brand for Honda and competing against BMW, Audi, and MBZ - they did the job for free. New head and timing set; bottom end was fine. They didn't do 5 year 60K mile warranties either back then - you were lucky to get 2 years 24K miles. Most were one year 12K miles.

Valvoline restore and protect anyone....