I think it's been well said - there is nothing very different in maintenance between a Civic and HCH, with three exceptions:

- If you have an HCH CVT (I agree - worth staying on top of)
- Your brakes will last much longer on the hybrid
- Lest we forget, the battery pack will ultimately need replacing. Although under warranty for 8 years (for non CA car), we'll all be in for that replacement bill one day.

My 2 cents on the oil - just as Rigger talked about staying on top of the CVT fluid, I personally change the oil every 3K (~ 3 months). It's only $35 - so $140 / year and provides, in my opionion, the best form of preventative maintenance. I've met lots of people with 250K on their engines - almost all of the swear by regular oil changes. I'm not so anxious to save $35 to risk an expensive repair, or to shorten the life of my engine.

 

The biggest rip-off today is the 3000 mile oil change! I know the Honda manual states the 5k/10k under normal/severe conditions. I saw this special a long time ago on 20/20 about oil changes and viscosity. They did a test on NYC taxi cabs and had them go 7500 miles between oil changes and then they tested the oil for viscosity. The results: no serious breakdown in oil viscosity after 7500 miles!


Even after seeing this, I still change my oil about every 5k as I feel that is a safe interval and also based on what the oil looks like when you check it.

 

I don't think that viscosity is the issue with changing oil. If you only drive short trips the oil will eventually accumulate contaminants from the combustion processes. It slowly loses its ability to trap and hold these contaminants in suspension and then you develop unwanted deposits on engine surfaces. There was an old rule of thumb, 50 hours or 3000 miles, whichever comes first.

Best way to gauge this is to install an hour meter that starts up each time the ignition switch is turned on. Maybe with auto-stop and hybrid engines the 50hrs could be increased a bit, who knows.....

 

Remember how much cleaner the HCH engine is too, something to take into account. The taxi cab engines as mentioned before are a good example of a vehicle that doesn't burn quite as clean. For an old rule of thumb like oil change intervals, think just that - "Old rule of thumb". That was when engines weren't as clean running.

Hasn't someone did an oil analysis? As mentioned before Bob Is the Oil Guy is an excellent resource for finding out just how clean our HCH's are compared to other cars.

I still can't bring myself to a 10,000 mile oil change, I let it slide to 8,000 once.

 

I've changed the oil in my '93 GMC every 5K for the past 12 years and 177K miles. I still obtain EPA mileage and don't burn any oil. I've mostly used dino oil. I think I may have put synth in 2 or 3 times. Lately, I've been using Valvoline high mileage oil.

The company I worked for prior to joining the Air Force ran their vehicles for around 100K miles per year. They'd go 10K or even 15K miles between oil changes. They didn't extend the oil change interval because of anything other than being too lazy and cheap to do the regular maintenance. They used cheap oil. And straight 30W. Some of these cars have over 500K miles and never destroyed an engine. One in particular (when I left in '01) had 670K, and was still running strong. They were mostly Cadillac Fleetwoods and Lincoln Towncars. All weighing around 7K pounds empty and occasionally carrying another 2K pounds in passengers and cargo. Definitely falls into the "severe" maintenance category. When I left, they had a 20 vehicle fleet. Last I heard, they've expanded quite a bit. I know they purchased 20 Mercury Marquis a few months after I left.

 

Another way of looking at it is: severely short interval oil changes contribute to oil consumption. A lot of people are concerned with their MPGs because they want to save money/oil. But at the same time, are they concerned about spending extra on (granted, only possibly) unneeded oil changes?

But in that regards, free country. If changing oil every 1K is what you want to do, so be it. If you want to maximize fuel mileage and pocket the savings, so be it. If you want to drive a Hummer and get 8 MPG, so be it.

 

Actually that's probably no more severe than an average car doing 15K miles per year. Both have the same number of cold starts in a year, more or less. And a car averaging more than 300 miles per day must be doing most of it on an open highway.

Every cold start is "severe" driving. Every mile of stop and go city driving probably puts more wear and tear than 10 miles on the highway.

 

Where do you live? Even in St. Louis, where I grew up, which has some of the most variable weather in the US, it gets over 90 and below 10 only a few weeks each season.....

 

bar10dah: I agree with you and have never thought about it along those lines as far as frequency of oil changes and consuming more oil. But like you said, each to their own. I still believe that only going 3k on an oil change is way too soon with the exception of maybe the first oil change due to the possibility of shavings on whatever being in a new engine.

 

Hybrids also have 8 spark plugs verses 4 in a normal civic