Mobil 1 Advanced Fuel Economy 0w-8 - Canada

My one-hour subscription ran out, so my final report is that there's whole new NCF specification pages for 202507!

The only difference I spotted is that the engine power spec has been raised from 111kW to 112kW, for the HEV only. Woo! Maybe a bit less oil resistance?

And maybe the PHEV is held back by its balance shaft...

 

Another thing I didn't know, thanks.

 

There's one Owner's Manual for both the States and Canada, as far as I know. It was thus in past. Any variations between the two countries are noted.

FWIW, if I had a 5th gen, I'd continue to use 0W20, figure it's thin enough already.

 

Why not 5W-30. LOL

 

They have also eliminated the PHEV charge mode in 2026. Could it be oil-related?

The elimination of the oil-level sensor is probably cost cutting because of Trump tariffs. It could be the same for the charge mode. There could be more function eliminations in 2027 to keep up with the tariffs.

I don’t expect a 1% increase in horsepower by going to 0W-8. It is probably just new roundoff.

Again, I doubt anything has changed on the engine, other than cost cutting on the oil-level sensor and some other cost-cutting measures.

 

Eliminating the CHG mode is a shame. I actually use it quite a bit to ensure the engine gets nice and warm on a regular basis, in the winter months. Without this practice the oil starts looking like yogurt.

 

You can run in hybrid mode, is that not similar, for engine runtime?

 

Seems like an urban legend is spreading. Has anyone seen any evidence of this?

 

Nope, it is no longer in the 2026 owner’s manual, also verified in person by the OP.

And, @KMO, so much for the US model years only being artificial designations.

 

That is a strange thing to remove. Maybe it caused small problems that they didn't want to deal with? Or it was such an unused feature by most people that removing it actually carried some sort of cost savings. We'll likely never find out.

 

Depends on the person's route. Car warm up cycles are all about getting the engine to an efficient running and emissions. The temperature at which coolant and the catalytic converter reach that point still has the oil below the temperature to drive off water.

Driving in hybrid mode to remove water requires drives longer than an ICE car. Charge mode prevents the engine off moments that cause that.

Don't know what they said, but US model years are artificial.

Or dealers got tired of dealing with customers misusing it and then complaining about fuel economy.

 

The really strange thing is that it appears that the removal is North America only - that's why I was doubting it - it hadn't been removed here.

Yeah, could be that, or at least regulatory concern about that. Maybe some new US emissions rule about "fuel-burning" modes?

 

My 2020 Prius Prime got the third rear seat, which was absent in 2017–2019, and my 2021 Prius Prime got upgraded from TSS-P to TSS 2.0, which introduced LTA and more.

 

Doesn't change the fact that US model years are arbitrary. It is 2025, yet you can buy a 2026 car. In the rest of the world, a car's year is the year it was built.

 

This is totally incorrect.

Toyota production years, which include possible design changes, historically go from sometime in August to sometime in August the following year. For example, if a Corolla was built in late August 1985, it would be a 1986 Corolla, and it would be a 1985 Corolla if it was built in early August 1985.

Lately, especially after the pandemic, the production start has been shifting from August toward the end of the year, but it is the same idea.

 

To add on that it's arbitrary, the month of the changeover varies greatly from year to year. Last year, I don't think the production change for the Prius from the 2024 model year to the 2025 happened until Jan of 25. And the switch to 2026 actually happened in July 25. So the 2025 Prius model year for the US was only about seven months of production.

So this is to say that Toyota currently doesn't seem to plan changes to a model by the calendar. They do the changes when it makes the most sense for them, then that becomes the model year separation if the change is big enough.

Gen 5 US model year production by actual date:
2023 - Jan 2023 (late start due to new design)
2024 - Oct 2023
2025 - Jan 2025 (late start partially due to 2 month production shutdown from door switches)
2026 - Jul 2025

 

That has always been the case. As I said before, the production model year cutoff for Toyota was historically sometime in August, but now, it varies more than it did in the past. It is like the fiscal year, which starts in July, not January, except in Toyota‘s case, the start month for the production year somewhat varies from year to year.

 

Model year - Wikipedia
"In other countries, it is more common to identify specific vehicles by their year and month of production, and cars of a particular type by their generation, using terms such as "Mark III" or by the manufacturer's code for that kind of car (such as "BL" being the code for a Mazda 3 built between November 2008 and June 2013)."

A Prius PHV made today for Europe is a 2025 car. Barring regional differences, it is the same as a 2026MY Prius PHV sold in the US.

 

The letter/number codes like AE86S**** are worldwide and should be a unique identification for a model. They are imprinted on the cars sold in the US as well.

Month/year does not uniquely identify a model without a lookup table. However, the model year will normally uniquely identify a model, as it does not correspond to the calendar year but a production period.