Oil Changes during Covid

Once a year regardless of miles is suggested.

 

The maintenance minder for the Clarity PHEV seems to want oil changes far more than is really needed. Mind you, no engine ever is damaged by "too many" oil changes. The damage is to one's pocket book. I change the oil and filter every other maintenance minder reminder. I rotate the tires, et cetera on schedule. That written, I would change the oil no less than every 12 months as craze1cars wrote.

I'm old fashioned and do the work myself. Changing the oil and filter is pretty easy. However, at 71, I'm finding the wheels and lug nuts get a bit heavier and harder to deal with than when I was young.

 

Let's say for the sake of argument that an ICE should have it's oil changed every 5,000 miles (or 1 year, whichever comes first).
With a Clarity, only a portion of the odometer miles will use the ICE (those miles occur when in HV mode, whether by command, or by running the EV miles to zero).

Just estimate whether your HV miles will exceed 5,000 in a year. If not, then simply change the oil once per year. One easy way to estimate your HV miles is to keep track of the gas that you use. Just multiply the total number of gallons you burned during the year by 40 to estimate your HV miles. This will be plenty close to judge the need for an oil change. If you burned less than 125 gallons, then just change the oil at the 1 year point.

In my case, I know that ~75% of my miles are EV. I drive ~10,000 odometer miles in a year, so only 2,500 are ICE miles. For my scenario, it is clear that once a year is the right answer.

I will also amplify that this car is as easy as any car to change the oil & filter yourself. The only complexities are the low ground clearance so you need appropriate ramps or jack / stands, and there is a cover panel with twist-lock screws to gain access to the filter / drain plug.

Note - there is a risk to changing the oil too often... It gives the ham-handed mechanic more opportunities to screw up (like not tightening the drain plug, or similar) !!

 

One thing to check when the Clarity asks for service -- it tries to bundle services. If it's showing a '1' (e.g. "A01" or "A1"), that's a tire rotation, which is the most frequent thing needed, every 7500 miles I believe. If you rotate the tires (or don't, the original tires aren't going to last much past 30K regardless) and reset just that item, often that will be enough to clear the service request and give another several weeks or months before the actual oil change is needed -- you can tell that's the case when resetting the tire rotation doesn't clear the service required.

 

You will cause no issue by waiting another 6 months. But your concern on the warrantee may be justified.

If you are high risk and have health concerns I would call your dealer. They would likely pickup the car, change the oil and drop it back off. There are also likely mobile oil change places that will come to you.


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BTW, the actual oil change frequency is around 10,000 miles with the 0W-20 oil we use, which I believe is always synthetic. and I do believe the maintenance minder gives *some* credit for how much the ICE is used. In the 2019 I just sold (replaced with a 2020), I only had to change the oil once, at 11,798 miles (sold it at 13K). Clearly not as simple as just counting engine running miles, since I drive 95+% EV, but also not a straight 10K on the odometer.

 

I got the same thing after maybe 2000 miles and 6 months of driving during COVID, mostly in EV mode. It is most likely triggered by a separate item (air filter or tire rotation).

If you do long distance trips Clarity engine works much harder than the typical ICE car, so it makes sense to have intervals that seem too short. The problem appears to be that the car cannot track these conditions and triggers oil change even though the engine hasn't done much.

 

I recently had my oil changed at just over 20,000 miles. The last change at 10,000 miles and 10 months ago. The oil was so clean even after 10,000 on the odometer that it was hard to check the oil level. An oil change at least every year or 10,000 is valid if most of your driving is EV.

 

I agree, I dream about hitting 150k miles and re-manufacturing my battery with state of the art cells giving me 70 miles of range! The engine gotta last for ever in this car.

 

BTW some knowledgeable people claim not using the engine for extended times is actually worse for oil, because moisture and gas will accumulates and ruins the oil faster. I am not sure how true this is in relation to Clarity, but I expect Honda's scheduled engine maintenance mode will take care of this.

 

Wheels and tires ARE bigger and heavier and harder to deal with now than when you were young. And if you drove economy cars when you were young the difference is even bigger!

 

Just hit 7500 and just hit this service. First oil change and tires were rotated at the same visit.


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