Oil changes are happening more than they need to
Deep in the heart of Car Care month is probably a good time to consider if maybe you change the oil in your car too often and maintain the pressure in its tires too little.
This is worth some thought because a change in attitude will probably save you time and money and help the environment as well.
With regard to your vehicles' tires, it's hard to over-estimate the value in keeping their pressure up to the manufacturer's recommended settings. Along with the improved performance and safety that comes with a better grip on the road, keeping the tires correctly inflated also increases fuel economy significantly and that cuts your expenses and the time you spend in gas stations.
As for maintaining the oil situation, there was a time when constant concern for a vehicle's oil condition was necessary to guarantee a long engine life or even any life at all. Indeed, it still makes sense to ensure that your vehicle's engine has enough oil to prevent it from running dry and maybe doing something terminal.
But technology has pretty much removed the ultimate downside of low oil through improved manufacturing and monitoring systems, which means you have to be aggressively stupid and ignore the warning lights on your instrument panel before real danger is possible.
So a lot of those folks who drop into an oil change facility every 5,000 km or so could be wasting a bunch of money and adding to their vehicle's burden on the environment by using more oil than they need to.
This is especially true with new vehicles, which don't need the kind of oil change diligence that previous models did.
Car companies are usually reluctant to promote this reality, of course, since they like any excuse to get a customer back onto their lot. Who knows what else they might be able to sell during that oil change visit, the thinking goes.
Some of the companies who sell the same vehicles in different parts of the world even have varying timetables for the same model and the same powertrain. So you don't have to change the oil in your German luxury sedan as often if you buy it in Europe as you do if you buy it in North America.
Sure, different climates and driving conditions make some difference to how often you need to change your oil, but there's also a large commercial consideration to this involving charging what the traffic will bear.