Why 5,000 mile oil change/ NOT GREEN

you are probably right although the prius does not hold a lot of oil so it will get contaminated more quicly than my benz did which held about 10 qts and had an official change of every 10,000 miles. my concern is my warranty. if the manufacturedr (who designed and built the car) demands that the oil be changed in 5000 miles thats what i will do. go longer if you want but you may lose part or all of your drive train warranty.

 

To minimize damage claims from someone who put Joe's Synthetic Oil, ran it for 8,000 miles, and blows the engine at 75,000 miles. Toyota, as any other major manufacturer, will always side with the minimums. This way, if you blow up your engine, Toyota will say that you didn't follow their recommended oil change intervals and your warranty is voided.

 

Few reasons:

1) Not all synthetic oils are created equal.
2) Past oil sludge lawsuit filed against toyota.
3) oil filter capacity.


1) Some oil change places buy cheapo brand of oil, which may be contaminated with dust and moisture. Although the oil may meet the specs, the contamination has reduced its longevity and protective ability.
2) There was a lawsuit filed against toyota for oil sludge because toyota recommended long change intervals, and they won.
3) the standard oil filter isn't designed to hold more then 5k worth of contaminants. Especially with cheap-o brand filters, the paper may disintegrate after 5k miles... And clog up the engine with pieces of filter material - thus destroying the engine.

 

Toyota realizes it. Someone correct me if I am wrong but aren't the oil change intervals longer in Europe? Things are not always based on what is best for the car or environment. I can give you a good example from personal experience.

I have a Mazda RX8 sports car. I am required to run 5w20 oil year round or void my warranty even though I know 5w30 is better for the engine In fact everywhere else in the world Mazda requires 5w30 to be used in this engine. Owners realized this and began a campaign the resulted in Mazda extending the warranty on the engine to 100,000 miles but the thin oil requirement for the US remained the same.

Now why does this situation exist? Simple really. Mazda was right on the verge of failing to meet the US fleet mileage standard. The thinner oil eeks a bit more mileage from the engine. The financial penalties for missing the government standard would be higher than the cost to the company of repairing the larger number of blown engines under warranty.

Toyota, and every other car company, only truly cares about the type of green that contains pictures of dead Presidents. Their really is nothing wrong with this, companies exist to make money and that is their prime directive.

 

Hey Alfon,

Its a good question you bring up but I do sometimes wonder about the probability of having an earlier failure using 10k oil changes vs. 5k oil changes. If one considers the number of time one changes the oil over the lifetime of the car (lets say 250k miles - or 50 changes max) vs 25 changes at 10k, I'm not sure the amount of energy in those ~100 qts of oil and 25 filters offsets the embedded energy in the Prius for the "extra" number of miles that one would get out of it. Since I'm talking about probablity here, I'm obviously talking about all the Prius' as a whole, not one individually.