Measured oil consumption. How is it doing?

I hope you are joking!

In case you are not, please discontinue to give that advice. Changing the oil accomplishes a lot more than just getting fresh fluid into the engine. Accumulated sludge is drained with old oil as well as the oil filter is replaced (usually) during an oil change. Regular oil change intervals are some of the most important and simple ways of protecting an engine. In my case I chose to go with full synthetic at $5/qt and have an interval of 10K miles. This costs $20 for initial fill of 4 quarts, $8 for a Toyota oil filter and $25 for the 5 quarts that are used up during 10K miles (at my rate of usage). Total is $53/10K miles. If I use dino oil, I will definitely go to a 5K interval, so the cost is the following. At $2.50/qt initial fill is $10 for 4 quarts, $8 for a Toyota oil filter and $6.25 for oil used during 5K miles. This brings us to $24.25. In 10K miles I will have spent $48.50 with dino oil vs. $53 with full synthetic. Looks like false economy to me. I did not even include the time I spend on the oil change, which is, say half an hour.

I can not take full credit for this car as I only just bought it at 175K miles last July. So the previous (and only) owner gets the credit. I bought this car after looking for a long time and one of the reasons I chose this car despite the high miles was the care the car was given.

Also, I was visiting NYC a few weeks ago and have learned that the city ordinance now requires all NYC cabs to be at least hybrid. This means that many of those cabs are Prius (I have never seen more Prius V's in one place before). They will be racking up some miles fast, I think.