Best Upkeep On 2018 Prius Prime?

Oil changes are simple with a Prius Prime.
The gas engine gets ~500miles per tankful.

For cars not under Warranty:
Do an oil change every Six Months, or 10 gas tank-fulls, whichever comes first.
And/or 5K miles, if you want to.

For cars Under Warranty:
Do an oil change every Six Months, or 5K miles.
Although Toyota is one of the best manufactures to honor the warranty, imho, you don't want to chance challenging a warranty coverage.

Good Luck!

 

Follow the owner's manual for maintenance. 10,000 mile oil drain intervals for an engine that has not run most of those 10k is not a problem. Oil in the crankcase will remain good longer than a year (I've done the testing), but what does harm the oil is short cool runs where the oil never gets warm enough long enough to get any moisture out. So...stick with the owner's manual.

 

nothing you can do for the battery except don't leave it charged for long periods of time, and keep the cooling fan filter clean.
since it's new to you, you might want to check the fan itself for contamination

 

There's also a long thread on prius chat about this.

If you plan to keep the car, do a *min* of 5K miles between oil changes. And, use a Very Top Tier full synthetic. Mobile1 is the one that most people have easy access to, for a "reasonable" price.

"Oil testing" is only a Very Small aspect of engine wear. These engines are also Very different than the engines of the 60's.


The Car Care Nut is a Certified Master Toyota Technician. He recently opened up his own shop.

Code:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJhFAwFv-O0
TOYOTA OWNERS! Please NEVER Do THIS to Your Toyota!
The Car Care Nut
Jul 30, 2022

At around 20mins, he briefly goes over the cost/benefit of doing 5K oil changes:

Code:

https://youtu.be/TJhFAwFv-O0?t=1200

 

We might as well be talking about politics/religion. Very sensitive subject to many. I don't understand why "oil testing" is controversial, though. How else can you know what's going on inside the engine? I've been using Blackstone for years on very expensive, high performance engines (BMW V10, Mercedes V12, etc.) and I fully trust the reports to tell me how my oil is performing. Boiling it down, the miles on the oil are more important than the time. Blackstone has repeatedly said I can increase the time interval between my changes because the oil has plenty of life left. So, I routinely go past the "time" recommendation in order to reach the "miles" recommendation, and have never had a dubious oil report. I recently did my first Blackstone on my 2016 Three Touring at 60K miles with 10K intervals using Walmart's SuperTech 0W-20, and got an excellent report. FWIW,

 

Yea, yea, yea.
BFD, what your "books and stuff" say.
!The World Is FLAT!

SIGH.....
In other words, people should watch the video, before they make fools of themselves.

Fwiw, he's not saying anything, that hasn't been known to mechanics, and engineers for many decades.
Now, with tighter tolerances, different materials, and more complicated systems, constant oil changes are more important.
He goes over a number of things in that video.
Play it at 2x speed. The ~25mins you spend, will be some of the most important 25mins, *If You Keep Cars Longer*!
However, if you're like the *typical* MB buyer, do the required stuff, trade it in, and have fun never having a vehicle that is over 3-5 years old.

In the video, he even mentions why oil analysis is okay, but why it's *100%* worthless in detecting the many issues that happen with "extended" fluid change intervals.
In the video, he even mentions why oil analysis is okay, but why it's *100%* worthless in detecting the many issues that happen with "extended" fluid change intervals.

NO WAY!
Yes way.
NO WAY!
Yes way.
NO WAY!
I give up!


Yea, I also get an oil analysis done.
Fwiw, for people that change their oil more than every ~15K miles (for a car they've owned since new), an oil analysis is basically saying "YOU ARE SO SMART, AND GOOD LOOKING, AND AWESOME, AND GREAT, AND YOU RULE!".

Honestly people, what do you expect it to return?
This isn't a POS GM car with a cam made out of soft butter and used metal shavings.
Unless people race their car (?a Prius?), there shouldn't be any thing, at all, interesting in the oil analysis.


Be careful people, you don't want to fall of the edge of the flat Earth.
Again, do not watch that video. That video has embedded space alien sonic technology that will melt your brain!
Here, drink some more fresh "Kool-Aid" that I just made you. Yea, that's good, drink some more. ;-)

 

"

Watching now.

He says, concerning using more oil with more frequent changes, used oil doesn't go down a drain or end up in a wasteland. True. Then he mentions all the oil a leaky engine will end up burning. Well, "74% of all oil re-use/recycling in the U.S. is for burning in turbines, incinerators, power plants, cement kilns and manufacturing facilities (asphalt, steel, etc...). An additional 11% of used motor oil is burned in specifically designed industrial space heaters." https://www.wlox.com/story/8367396/the-many-uses-of-recycled-motor-oil/ He also mentions how the collection of used oil is a cost and hassle, but forgets more oil changes means more of that.

He's right about dealerships, and we can add the oil change chains and majority of shops, get the cheapest oil that meets requirements they can.

All we see in the video is some gummed up piston rings. Poor oil quality, or too long an oil change interval, are only a possible cause, not the only one. Poor quality fuel can also lead to such carbon deposits. Short trips or running hot can lead to it. At 25k miles a year, short trips aren't likely a problem. The mileage could mean hard driving and higher heat. The water pumps are known to fail internally. A partial failure or coolant line blockage could lead to too much heat in areas.

The rings or cylinder could have been defective from the start, and weren't fully draining the oil collected off the cylinder walls. It was an issue with the previous engine model. It should be fixed, but manufacturing defects happen. Such could also be the reason for poor coolant and oil flow.

Changing the oil at 5k miles might have prevented the engine damage, but doesn't mean it fixed the issue.

It's the engineers that are setting the change interval in the manuals. It was engineers that developed the monitoring systems GM and Honda uses.

In the '80s, when everyone was doing 3000 miles changes, a news program asked when a lead mechanic of a race car crew changed the oil in his personal car. He said 7000 miles.

I don't think you or the video host understand what an oil analysis can tell you.

That car in the video had bad wear to the cylinder wall. The worn off metal has to go somewhere, and it goes into the oil. An analysis would have picked up the elevated levels of iron. It couldn't tell you where the problem is, but it would tell you there is a problem that needs finding. It would tell you that long before you reached the need to replace the low end of the engine.

So if you think 5k mile intervals are a panacea for all engine ills, why not 3000 miles? That's 2000 miles or 2 months less wear and time on the oil for it to become a problem.

 

So the oil control rings* got gummed up. Trollbait mentioned possible causes. We do not know what quality oil was used. As mentioned, dealerships contract for whatever bulk oil meets spec at the lowest cost, not whatever oil is best. If a customer pays for synthetic oil, is it actually provided? I've seen ExxonMobil literature that showed that their bulk oil was different composition from retail oil of the same spec. This was a couple of oil specs ago, maybe SL or SM. Now, 0W-20 is only synthetic, and the newest oil spec, GF-6A and Service Category SP has improvements in, "more stringent sludge and varnish control," among other improvements.
API | Oil Categories

*The purpose of the oil control rings is to scrape excess oil off the cylinder walls and down to the crankcase. The oil control rings need to leave a very small amount of oil on the cylinder walls to lubricate the piston skirt and compression rings. If the drain holes into the center of the piston get sludged then the oil can't drain and the result is what's shown in the video.

The engine in the video looks like it had a Toyota design problem. We can hope that Toyota has corrected it without necessarily admitting the problem. In any case, that engine had 10,000 miles of engine operation. That is nothing like most of our Primes with, maybe, 2,000 or 3,000 miles of engine operation in the 10,000 mile span. I know that our engine has that. With our 10k oil drain intervals I see oil that looks almost clear and has no noticeable consumption.

I know that most of us avoid snake oil for magical engine maintenance, but I have had good results with this product, Auto-RX

 

The previous engine does have a TSB about excessive oil consumption and piston rings.

I can't find a MSDS or SDS for it. The 'environmentally safe' label has me guessing in contains vegetable oil and/or biodiesel.

 

With excessive oil consumption, the question must be asked, where did the oil go, and what harm did it cause along the way.

Auto-Rx is an ester product, lanolin and aliphatic, and polyol esters.
U.S. Patent US6544349B1 "A method is provided for in situ cleaning of lubricated parts of a machine in which the machine is operated with a lubricating fluid that contains an effective concentration of a cleaning composition comprising a synthetic ester of a naturally occurring fatty acid for an amount of time sufficient to remove from the lubricated parts adhered debris which is not removed by the lubricating fluid conventionally used in the machine."
I'm not hyping nor selling this product. I'm just saying that it has worked well for me. My 202,000 mile turbo Volvo was still running fine when I sold it after using this product about every 50k miles. The oil filler opening showed clean camshaft and top-of-head area with no sludge or varnish.

 

"... a synthetic ester of a naturally occurring fatty acid..."
That's biodiesel. Though most of it is made from a vegetable source than animal. Switching to it can cause clogging issues in a car that has run on just diesel all its life, as it does a wonderful job of cleaning out the fuel tank.

 

The best way to keep the battery strong is to keep it at 40 to 80% charge.

That is to say, never fully discharge the battery to 0% and never fully charge it to 100%.

But you have to use the battery, so 40 to 80% is the best.

I just do this. Highway speed 45 to 65 is the ICE job. 25 to 45 is the battery's job. Getting upto speed is always the battery's job.

I have a 2017 and during winter the range estimate is now 23.8 miles. So after 5 or so years the battery is still strong. In warmer temps it shows 26 to 28 mile range estimate.

Edit: also someone mentioned above to never keep the battery at 100% charge. That is very much true. Try to schedule your charge end time to 30 minutes after you intend to leave.

If you leave with 90% charge, that is ideal and perfect. Having to wait 30 to 60 minutes too get the last 10% charge really strains the battery.

Phones have a rated cycle of like 200 or 300 full charge cycles. This is because full charges hurt the battery. Maybe due to heat or longer charge times? I am not sure.

 

That is the state of charge range of NiMH to allow it to last the typical life of a hybrid car. Li-ion can be discharged deeper than NiMH and lead-acid, and still have the same, or longer, lifespan.

The 40% level in regards to storage of Li-ion. That is if you are going to stick a device on a shelf, or park a car, for an extended period of time. Li-ion lasts longest at lower charge levels, but it self discharges like all batteries. If it reached true 0%, it can be damaged. The 40% level is chosen to account for self-discharge.

None of these cars fully charge to 100% or discharge to 0%. Maybe a model pushes the boundaries beyond the safe limit for battery life, like the old Honda hybrids did, but there hasn't been any evidence of that. All these cars have reserve capacity buffer at the top and bottom end of the battery for long life. The manufacturers don't want to pay for warranty claims. In the case of PHEVs, the battery is part of the emission system in regards to those.

Some plug in models start with a larger buffer, and will make use of it to compensate for normal capacity loss. To the owner, the car has the same range as new, even though the car has lost battery capacity.

Toyota recommends this, but their lawyers might be thinking of the Leaf. Early models of that EV saw early battery degradation in hot climate. When a fully charged battery is heated up, say like in a hot garage, the chemistry effectively enters an overcharged state, which is not good for its health. Like the Leaf, the Prius doesn't have an active cooling system beyond ambient temperature air flow.

Don't leave the battery at 100% for extended periods of time in warm climates, but it is probably fine in cold ones.

These are smart chargers, they greatly slow the rate of charge during the last 20% to 10% to prevent that strain. Charging that last bit can strain the battery, because the internal resistance increases with SOC, and more heat is produced in the battery. Charge at a lower rate, and the rate of heat build up also drops.

For driving in just EV on a trip, leaving a public charger before this slowing of charging will improve trip time. Before a long trip, you want to charge the battery as high as possible to possibly reduce the number of charge stops.

 

All good information to know. Batteries are still NEW to the public and there was a TON of misinformation out there when we first started receiving gadgets with lithium ion tech. I still remember the days when there was a portable TV with antenna powered by Duracell batteries.

Today in 2020, Samsung released an update specifically to preserve battery life in their older android phones. The option pretty much charges the battery to a maximum 85% in order to prevent battery degradation. Says that it can prolong battery life upto 1000 charge cycles.

Dell XPS/business machines have an app called Dell Power Manager. And somewhere deep/hidden in their documentation for that app, they say if you select plugged-in mode, it will keep the SOC at 90% and can sustain 10,000 charge cycles because of this.

Dell machines in a corporate and even WFH environment are typically always plugged into the wall. Dell also sells docking stations and multiple monitors so they pretty much know their market.

I don't know if Toyota does this with their chargers. I know I may have let my Prime sit to 100% for a few days. I didn't think of all this in 2018/2019 when I was driving the thing.

But after WFH and Samsung/Dell updating their machines to include this, I started thinking more about it and now I adjust my charging ways.

But the cool thing about the Prius is that the battery looks to be somewhat "user friendly" when servicing it. Because they already did the hardest part for us. They put the battery inside the cabin and just by the trunk. Pretty much very easy to work on. No lift required.

Just have to take your time and have the right tools to service the unit. And who knows! In ten years or so after I've driven the thing for 15+ years I will service and replace the batteries myself!

Overall excellent machine. I replace all the dell laptop batteries and even some phone batteries from time to time. Prius and Dell in my opinion have some excellent documentation for DIY and long service life.

 

The Prius Prime battery kWh capacity is 8.8. The reported usable capacity is around 6.6. For hybrid mode, the system is working with 0.75 kWh based on the Prius specs are. The portion of unused capacity in the Prime pack is around 15%. Don't know if anyone pinned down the top and bottom amounts are, but I expect Toyota has done their homework. The warranty on the battery is 10 years, and the assumption is that the car is charged up and discharged nearly every day. So the BMS is designed to get the battery last thousands of those charge cycles.

The model is five years old. If there was an issue that simply driving the car around by those that don't read the manual, we'd would be hearing about it here.

 

Yeah you are likely right. I just mention battery conditioning as I think it will help all users in this new battery everything age. Battery tech isn't something that you can learn via intuition or something physically. You learn about the batteries over time. Or by experience. And we learn about it from reading tech articles and whatnot.

I recall early PHEV drivers mention and testing that the battery is set to preserve the state of charge on these units. And to avoid fast charging with 240v fast chargers for longevity. I just think that every user can use more lithium ion battery knowledge! It is like learning about how to rotate your own tires or change the brake fluid every 2 years because air bubbles form over time. Or how to change your spark plugs. Nowadays it is somewhat common knowledge.

But you are likely correct. Toyota's engineers have likely thought about this issue and have accounted for it.

 

My ScanGauge II connected to the ODB port shows the actual charge reported by the battery: when the dash shows battery at 100%, the scanner shows 87%, give or take a bit. When the dash battery level is 0% and hybrid mode kick in, the scanner shows a battery level of 14.5%. I've seen that go as low as 10% (such as driving at low speed after leaving EV mode), but if you continue driving it will "try" to recharge the battery to 14.5%, which seems to be where it likes to keep the battery in hybrid mode once the EV range is depleted.