My Prius has 343,000km(212k miles) bought used was burning around 1 quart every 2500-3000km I did all the usual fixes like pcv, cleaning maf and full tune up. finally coming from Honda’s all my life which had valve cover gaskets as routine maintenance item when you do valve adjustment I decided to pull of the valve cover on the Prius the gasket was basically baked into the metal and came off in chunks and the rest needed to be scrapped off. i replaced it with a new fel pro gasket and now it’s been almost 4000km and only burned 150-200ml of oil.
Are you sure the oil wasn't just leaking before? Not easy to get into the cylinders and burn, through a valve cover gasket.
Could it be the failing valve cover gasket was letting air get sucked in, messing up PCV valve operation, or pulling oil up into combustion chamber somehow. If OP’s oil consumption has indeed dropped dramatically with that one change, something was going on.
So the O.P. found out that his valve cover was leaking? I don't see an explanation other than he states that it was brittle, changed it out and now it burns less. TomK
This is a very common issue on the gen I volt, can even cause coolant to disappear only difference on the Volt is there is an inner and outer valve cover gasket that require replacement Would be excellent if this was the actual issue on all PRII