2013 Toyota 3rd Gen Prius #3 Oil Change Advice

Best Practice for 2013 Prius (or ANY Prius IMHO)

Oil Check every 30 days or 1,000 miles.
Oil Change every 6 months or 5,000 miles.
If your car has more than 100,000 miles it then you need to start reading threads in this forum about head gasket failures and EGR coolers.

Dirty oil 'might' exacerbate this condition.

Owner's manual says you can go 10,000 miles between oil changes but this is not a good idea - IN MY OPINION.
I've never owned a Prius but I've driven 2 G3's for my company and have 200,000 miles in type.

There are strong opinions about EVERYTHING in America these days and "oil wars" are one of the more contentious things people debate in this forum.
If you have more than 120,000 miles on your car then you REALLY need to check your oil every 30 days and you need to also check your coolant level at the same time.
The threads about head gasket failures and clogged EGR coolers will explain everything in the fullness of time.

Good Luck!

 

You may not be in it very much longer going forward so I would be making arrangements for when that happens because it will be all of a sudden we have several generation twos here that never stop driving We have a few generation 3s that are dead in the water and are going to cost thousands to fix I don't even have thousands in the other three generation twos so obviously those are driven and the threes are parked Not purposely they're just broken and cost way more than they would ever be worth at least to me so there's always that I'm always two steps ahead of my transportation we have several people here that need to go and come back so there's always things like that I don't like this having to spend my days mulling over thousands of dollars of repair and wondering how I'm going to get somewhere screw that but that is how things are going moving forward or you better have plenty of resources in the bank to deal with all the shoddy funny business.

 

For any car in active use, even minimal use, at least once a year oil change is a good policy. That’s us, and what I’m doing now.

 

Depending on where you live, 3000 miles would be correct. Read the manual about
driving in severe conditions. Hot/humid conditions, dirty/dusty roads, etc.
But 5000 would be the smartest time to do it.
If you drive less than 1000 a month, checking the oil level every 30 days likely would work.
I have been averaging around 1300 miles a week. I would never need to "check" my oil level
because I'd be changing it before then. But actually, I'd run out of oil first, or at least be low
enough to damage the engine.
I check my oil every other time I fill the fuel tank. I usually fill at half a tank.