Who changes their oil every few months?

Locations will become more difficult to find once society reaches 30% ev adoption, maybe even less. Much of the 100k mile maintenance programs is because people don't like making the choice.

I'm not sure you understood my point. I was pointing out that oil changes are less frequent than this. I take my ICE in once every two years, and my PHEV even less than that.

It may be true that when 30% of vehicles are EVs, oil change locations will be hard to find, but I doubt it. Even if dedicated oil change chains cease to exist, people will still need tires, alignment, etc, and those shops will presumably provide oil change services.

Regardless, it's going to be a while before 30% of vehicles on the road are EVs — isn't it like 1-2% of new cars sold? If vehicles stay on the road for 20 years, then EVs won't be 30% of the total fleet for a long time.

Globally, 10% of sales are EVs. For the European Union it's 12% and the United States 6%.

The EU has a lot of variance (Sweden 32%) and I assume the USA does too.

https://www.wri.org/insights/countries-adopting-electric-veh...

Average car age in the EU is 12 years.

You change your oil once every two years ? Do your cars die at 40k miles ? ICEs in my experience deteriorate pretty rapidly if you keep driving them on dirty oil

Every two years for the average US car is like 26,000mi oil change interval. Insane they think an oil change every two years is normal.

Synthetic oils can do that.

No expert is going to suggest any normal car should operate for 26,000mi per oil change. Even modern synthetics and modern engines recommend 7,500 or so miles, and can often be stretched for a bit over 10,000mi, but 26,000mi as a normal interval is way beyond that.

My modern car recommends synthetic changes at 7,500 miles by the book. Sending off samples to the labs, it looked good at that point but started to get some bad degradation at about 11,000mi. It would be sludge a little after 15,000mi and would have probably destroyed the engine before 25,000mi

Not all synthetics can do that of course, but some can. There are people who have gone several hundred thousand miles without an oil change and an oil analysis says they are still good.

Oil analysis is about the cost of an oil change for most people and sometimes says change the oil so most people just change the oil. For some it makes sense to do oil analysis.

Please show me a single car manual for an ICE advising a 26,000mi oil change interval or any normal motor oil sold advertising its good for 26,000mi.

Otherwise you're talking about extremely rare one-off cases where someone's car happened to be in just the right environment and built just perfectly the whole time. I'm not talking about "that one time one guy in a forum five years ago said his car lasted 120,000mi without an oil change", I'm talking about normal advice for normal car drivers.

https://www.amsoil.com/ their 25000 mile oil when combined with their bypass filter and regular oil tests.

No OEM car manual says this is recommended.

Crazy to see them recommend it, but they do:

> Normal Service – Up to 25,000 miles (40,200 km), 700 hours of operation or one year, whichever comes first, in personal vehicles not operating under severe service.

That said, this still goes against the person who I was originally commenting about. They suggested going 2+ years between oil changes, and while the mileage does fit here for the average car the timeframe doesn't.

You're also technically 1,000mi short from my ask but I'll grant if it actually is OK at 20,000mi it's probably still OK at 26,000mi.

You missed the bypass filter. If you add that to your engine you can replace the yearly / 25000 oil change with oil analysis, if that comes out okay just change the filters (replacing only the oil in the filter), thus not doing a full oil change. . If you only use their oil then 25000 miles is 1000 miles short.

For most people oil analysis and their filters is more expensive than just changing the oil.

We mostly drive our PHEV. The ICE gets maybe 4k miles/yr. I realize this is less than most, but my point was that changing oil every few months would be very uncommon (and either due to someone driving 20k mi/yr, or a misunderstanding about how frequently it’s needed).

> I realize this is less than most,

It's not just that it's a bit less, it's like a few standard deviations less.

The average US car goes a hair over 13,000mi/yr.

The stores I get tires from haven't offered auxiliary services for the last decade.

Agreed. My point was that the claim that it will become hard to get oil changes is laughable. Even if dedicated shops disappear, other places that offer adjacent services (and have lifts that would make it trivial to do oil changes) would start offering the service.

If oil change places start to disappear the cost for an oil change is going to go way up. Just about any shop will give you an oil change today, see how much more expensive they'll charge for their master certified mechanic to change your oil versus the barely trained fresh out of highschool grad that still needs to always stop and say "lefty loosey..." every time they pick up a wrench.

I don't follow. You think there won't be barely-trained people working in auto shops? The people who put put on tires and do alignments would be pretty similar to the people who do oil changes. They'll just do oil changes in addition to putting on tires.

Yeah, and go to a shop like that and see their prices compared to the places that only do oil changes. They're usually twice the labor price compared to low cost oil change places in my experience.

Even just putting the car on the lift and jacking it up is already more work, requires more training, and has more risk than having someone in the pit at a fast oil change place.

A pit is more risk than a lift. Both have their dangers, but a lift is easy to inspect and tends to have redundant safeties so that it doesn't fail and kill people. A pit by contrast can fill with deadly gas (from the exhaust of the car) that you can't tell are there until someone passes out.

It's not a big deal, but that doesn't mean people do it.

Oil changes are a tremendous burden and expense and this is one of my top three reasons, almost the reason, I bought an EV.

$100 every few months is not what I'd call a tremendous burden. Even dealers when you pay extra for synthetic oil don't charge $100 for an oil change. Quick lube places are all over and are cheaper with no appointment needed.

A super-minor pain point, to be sure. But one that's just gone for me. That's pretty sweet, imho.

The EV still requires tire maintenance-- I think the trouble of dealing with that utterly dwarfs oil changes.

It's one of those things you don't really get until you experience it.

No oil changes. No finding a gas station just to refuel. No worrying about whether the engine is warm enough for setting off in the morning. No smell before the cats light off. Instant heat. Instant torque. Dead silent. The list goes on and on.

After you get used to it, the idea of going back to ICE again is unfathomable. Why would I want to give up the convenience I have now? For road trips? Ha! I have both ICEV and EV at the moment and it is the EV that is the preferred road trip car, not the ICEV.

You actually don't want to wait for your engine to warm up beforehand unless you are going to immediately punch it or go on the highway. Your engine warms up multiple times faster under a light load than it does idling.

Sure, but you have to be aware that it's still cold and it affects how you drive. It affects how the car feels. Is it a huge deal? Nope, not by itself. But it's just another one of those anachronistic things you do today that you will chuckle about in the future.