My Maintenance Minder says A and 0. A = change oil and filter, 0 = inspect a bunch of stuff. I've got maybe 250 miles on the gas engine. Is this really necessary? Got the car in October and just cruise around town on that cheap juice from the plug. Free charging at work too.
The Clarity lumps things together that it needs.. the problem with that is not all thing need to be done at the same time. The tires need to be rotated and so they have put that with a oil change that does not need to be done yet. About 4 months ago I was at 6500 miles and I have 3 weeks before needing the service you are talking about. I went and reset my tire rotation (from the touch screen) and low and behold I had 4 more months. In fact that was 4 months and I still have 2 months to go before service. I took it down to Discount Tires and they rotated them for free... give it a try, reset the tire rotation and then look to see how long you have until the maintenance minder tells you that you need service!!
Many modern car manufacturers state that you should change oil and filter at least once per year of driving. It isn't clear to me whether this "aging" requirement bears any relationship to average miles driven (using an ICE in most cars), but I am assuming not, which means I plan to change my oil at my one year ownership anniversary point regardless of ICE miles (which won't be even 1,000 mi. by then). This seems to be consistent with the obscure footnote #1 in the Clarity manual on p. 478.
I also plan to ignore the maintenance minder and will be changing the oil and filter every six months and rotating tires every 6,000 miles. DYI on both. I just think six months is long enough for oil to sit in an engine even if the mileage on HV is relatively low. Oil soaks up acids and has additives that get weaker over time. Maybe six months is overkill especially since I will be using synthetic, but I also am prone to missing my deadlines so setting a six month target gives me some extra padding. And changing the oil every six months (okay maybe eight months ) should satisfy any warranty requirements. Although based on what you found in the manual they probably wouldn't hassle you if change at least once a year, but I wouldn't go a day over a year as that might be a warranty risk.
