Excess Oil Consumption in the 3rd Gen Prius?

Prius motors don't seem to have an issue with burning oil, but any engine could burn oil, Its best to check your oil at every fill.

 

not sure what you keep hearing, but i have seen very few reports here about oil consumption. i'm on my third pri and have never seen the oil level change at all.

 

I have owned many Toys and have never had an issue with usage of oil. Just change the oil every 5K.

 

I think the answer is you do NOT need to worry.
The Prius is among the top cars for reliabilty and this includes minimal oil losses.
You need to be aware that automotive web site posts are biased toward those motorists reporting problems, because if you are not having problems, no sense posting about it.
Except for EV's , no ICE car I am aware of can promise zero oil losses forever.
For this reason the poster above mentioned the best practice is check oil every fill-up for every car (nothing special about Prius, just any ICE car could lose oil suddenly). Like many best practices, I actually don't do it myself. My 2006 holding tight at 125K maybe a hint of low level once recently, bumping up monitoring a little bit.

 

I have never had any noticeable loss of oil between oil changes, but I still check it every week or so.

 

Don't believe everything you read on the internet...ESPECIALLY from know-it-all jerks (sometimes....like me!) that think that they know more than they really do.
And NO.
You shouldn't worry.
Prius owners are already famous for that and you don't want to waste time fretting over things that you don't have any rudder input over, especially since you already have the car!

If you bought your G3 new, and take good care of it, then I don't think that oil consumption is going to be a problem for you especially f you trade it in early (at 140k) like you did with the Focus.
I'd like to tell you that I'm anal enough to check my oil every time I fill the tank (500 miles) but it's closer to every two tanks.
50K miles on a 2010 and zero consumption.
I've got three years and a few thousand posts on this site and I don't hear about much about oil consumption with the G2s or G3s.
Since you're letting the dealership swing the wrenches on your car, I think I'd put the giveacrap switch in the "don't" position.

 

I have a gen2 Prius now at close to 100,000 miles and no measurable oil use between 10,000 mile oil change intervals. This does not mean I neglect to check the oil level as that is a asking for trouble.
Can you be that sure the person that changed your oil torqued up the drain plug, changed the washer, seated the oil filter gasket correctly?
Any of these can give a slow leak and if you do not check how are you going to know. Surely you top up the windscreen washers sometimes visually check brake fluid level and air up your tyres why not check the oil level while your there.
Checking these things is part of driving, and in the UK showing you know how to do this is part of our driving test.

John (Britprius)

 

That specific issue is for 2.4L engine that had defective pistons installed (too few oil holes). Similar to the 1.8L engine problems a decade ago. The engines in the current and previous prius are not generally known for excessive oil consumption, but it's always possible, thus check your oil.

 

I have 23.5k miles thus far on my Prius. I haven't noticed any abnormal oil consumption. I haven't heard anything special about Prius consuming oil. As with any vehicle, hybrid or not, some individual cars may consume oil and some may not. Prius is not immune to or especially susceptible to oil consumption to my knowledge.

 

You should worry.

If that's what it takes for you to pop the hood once in awhile.
It's really not that hard. You can do it without soiling your hands, Big Guy!!

Oil consumption can be related to usage. On a long, high speed (+80mph ) trip with two bikes on a trailer hitch bike rack I saw oil consumption. It was like having airplane speed brakes deployed,,, 35.8 MPG into a headwind in hilly western PA. My worst EVER....
This car used as a normal daily commuter did not seem to consume much between 10k oil changes and is always in the mid to upper 40's mpg.

Edit: That oil consumption was ~2800 miles/qt.
But that was all in 5 days of HIGH Speed travel a with weight and aero load on the car.
When used the car in a daily manner it was maybe down a qt. by 7500 miles.
Always M1 .

 

My dipstick goes from full to half around 7k miles, then I add 1qt of regular 5w30 oil which seems to slow the burning process, then I change the oil at 8500 miles

 

Oh definitely: who knows how long that might last, LOL.

Seriously, ours is the first car we've had that consumes no oil between changes, albeit the 8000 km Canadian interval. I guess it will vary, depending on manufacturing tolerances etc, but so far...

And I can't see a correlation between oil consumption and needing to go to shorter change interval; with an engine that consumes oil fast enough you never need to do an oil change.

 

There have been a couple reports of cars burning oil at higher mileage, and I believe I posted a thread with some links at some point.

There are definitely a lot of members here who continue to make high-level statements concerning Prius reliability, and completely refuse to acknowledge the existence of any issues.

With that said, it's too early to say that the Prius is/ will be a chronic oil burner, so I would not worry about the issue.


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I have a 2011 Prius III and it started burning oil around 90k miles. It goes through just under a quart every 1200 miles. I can't go the 10,000 interval between oil changes w/o adding oil. The dealer can do a oil consumption test where they:
-Dealership tops off your oil and puts anti-tampering goo on oil cap, dipstick
-You drive for 1100 to 1299 miles
-Return to dealer, they add 1 quart of oil to car
-If the dipstick shows anything lower than "full", it is consuming excess oil

I've had this done twice and it just barely passes this excess consumption test so they won't do anything. Chimicles & Tikellis LLP law firm has begun a class action investigation for 2010 and 2011 Prius's. Just google "Chimicles & Tikellis Prius class action" and it will be a few results down.

If you are having this issue, you can call Toyota headquarters to complain at: 1-800-331-4331 from 7am to 7pm CST.

FYI, for another oil consumption class action against Toyota (certain models/years of Camry, Solara, Corolla, Matrix, Rav4 and Scions) , they extended the power-train warranty to 150,000 miles and 10 years.

This is my first Toyota and I am not pleased with the performance. I have never owned a vehicle where I had to top off the oil between oil changes. I can't believe they say it is OK to consume up to a quart every 1200 miles. The interval for oil changes is 10,000 miles. The Prius holds 4.2 quarts of oil. If you lose 1 quart every 1200 miles, you would run dry in just over 5000 miles!

At that rate of loss, you would need to add over 8 quarts of oil for every oil change interval. At $5-10 per quart for synthetic oil (as recommended by Toyota), that would cost $40-80 per oil change interval to replace the consumed oil.

I didn't buy a Prius for it's curb appeal; I bought it for how "green" it was. I'll keep repeating the oil consumption test until it qualifies. If it does, Toyota may authorize full or partial payment for repairs. If anyone has success in getting their Prius fixed, please contact me.

 

Drive it fast on the freeway for extended periods of times. That's where is will use the most oil. Best of luck to you. Sorry to hear that your vehicle is using oil. I can't stand when a vehicle eats oil. It just shouldn't happen in this day and age.

 

The owner's manual sets "excessive" oil consumption at a quart every 600 miles, IIRC. The test parameters mentioned above have double the distance factor. Maybe Toyota is making some concessions behind the scenes?

FWIW all our Honda's, over decades, had some consumption, but never more than a pint between oil changes. Maybe there's some sort of benefit, to minor but steady consumption??

 

I've actually that minor steady oil consumption is the best over the long run, that would make sense with all those honda engines

 

Yeah, they're like two-stroke engines, purposely consuming oil.