Here is this guy who made a test with his Toyota Corolla, he changed the oil after 10,000 miles and sent a sample to a laboratory to see how the oil held up. And the oil was fine, he could even go further than 10,000 miles, and keep in mind that this a non hybrid Corolla, whose engine is going to run quite more often than the one on a Prius, and the Corolla engine is not as efficient too, and the oil still held up well. Since the Prius intention is to be cheap to run and maintain, and pollute less in the long run, doing 5,000 miles oil changes might be against that a little.
A Prius is different and more problematic with its Atkinson cycle engine and frequent stop start thermal cycling. But it is your head gasket and oil consumption.
Well the engine still run less on a Prius, the Corolla engine is running all the time the car is being used, in the Prius is not. If the Corolla engine oil made it to 10,000 miles and was still looking quite good, i don't see why the Prius could not do.
I removed and cleaned the intake manifold on our 2014 Corolla when I installed an oil catch can, and there was no egr cooler, and no egr passages in the intake manifold like in the the Gen 3 Prius. Therefore, the Corolla doesn't inhale dirty/sooty air into the cylinders, which I'm sure has some blow by gases making it into the crankcase and oil. Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
I happen to change mine at 5k. Just did it an hour ago. I did one at 10k early on. There wasn't any meaningful consumption found then, and the color wasn't even bad. But I like 5k better, so I do that. If the cost of oil quadruples I'll stretch it back to 10k, but I'm set until then.
I have been changing the oil every 10k for both my Prius and Prius-C since new. I did not notice any meaningful oil consumption on my Prius until last year. At 110k miles I saw obvious oil consumption on my Prius, so I started changing the OCI to 5k. As for the Prius-C, it has been parked in my garage since May 2020. I just wonder if I should clean the EGR and intake manifold, and reduce the OCI to 5k. I didn't notice any oil consumption at my last oil change at 11k miles 18 months ago.
I think oil and a filter are cheap insurance. In all of my previous cars, I changed things at 3000 miles. In my 2018 Prime, I change oil and filter every 6 months. Since I do it myself, and it is super easy - I just use the opportunity to look things over and make the neighbors think I'm Mr. Super Mechanic - which I am not - haha.