Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Global shortage has led to motor oil rationing at Costco

guessingheadlights.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 225 posts

Re: Global shortage has led to motor oil rationing at Costco

#151

Post by MandieD »

hypfer wrote: post #13

YouTube channel Regular Car Reviews also predicted this ca 3 months ago. So now it's here. Or.. there? How's the situation in the EU?

I looked up the motor oil for my car; it's still about the price I would expect (high compared to US normal, not exorbitant) and allegedly available at the nearest branch of a large German retail car parts chain, as is the transmission oil.

... think I'll pick some up if they do indeed have it.

Our gasoline is well into the 2.20+ EUR/liter range, and diesel is even more.

Re: Global shortage has led to motor oil rationing at Costco

#152

Post by formerly_proven »

sschueller wrote: post #21
medler wrote: post #16

Not having to deal with oil changes is one of the many benefits of driving an EV

Is there really nothing that has oil in it that at some point needs changing?

Transmission/differential oil tends to last a very long time (150-400k, unit doesn’t matter). Automatics require relatively frequent oil changes in comparison, but they’re using the oil to transmit power. Lots of greased parts, but again, the grease will last about as long as the part (mostly because the grease falling apart makes the part fail), which usually lasts the life of the car.

Re: Global shortage has led to motor oil rationing at Costco

#153

Post by formerly_proven »

2III7 wrote: post #84
josephcsible wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is oil for the gearbox, but there's no scheduled maintenance for it at all, and in practice, people regularly get hundreds of thousands of miles without ever needing to think about it.

On a DSG gearbox the interval is 65k km. You should also change the transmission fluid in a regular automatic and a manual transmission. Some cars have a service interval for those transmissions and some don't. The "lifetime" oil statement is a lie.

It refers to the design lifetime of the vehicle. Usually accurate. Mileages may vary.

Re: Global shortage has led to motor oil rationing at Costco

#154

Post by taneq »

sschueller wrote: post #21
medler wrote: post #16

Not having to deal with oil changes is one of the many benefits of driving an EV

Is there really nothing that has oil in it that at some point needs changing?

There’s still gearbox oil, diff oil, and brake fluid. These last far longer and are far smaller volumes than engine oil, though.

Re: Global shortage has led to motor oil rationing at Costco

#155

Post by taneq »

mikestew wrote: post #135
consp wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not op, but brake fluid comes to mind, power steering fluid, transfer/reduction box. All depends on which ev you are talking about. Things like cv joints, axels and other rotating parts also require greases, again depending on make and model. Not that those need yearly replacement but they do need maintenance.

Brake fluid isn’t oil (generally speaking). EVs have electrical motor-driven power steering, not hydraulic. You scored correctly on the reduction box, which will need changing well after most people sell the car (>100K miles).

It’s hydraulic fluid, which is oil. It’s not formulated the same as engine oil, but it’s not far off gear oil.

Re: Global shortage has led to motor oil rationing at Costco

#156

Post by bawolff »

toasty228 wrote: post #97
icantevenhold wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can definitely replace petroleum for many of the things you listed - or find alternative technologies that don’t require it. You can live without plastic bags or plastic clothes for instance. It’s just that a lot of companies (and people) get very rich from it and they invest A LOT into making sure that petroleum alternatives are not viable. Of course there are some things were petroleum cant be easily substitute…

> You can definitely replace petroleum for many of the things you listed - or find alternative technologies that don’t require it. You can live without plastic bags or plastic clothes for instance. Not really, not at this scale, or this price and convenience. Most things you enjoy today are affordable because we have fossil fuels. The entire supply chain of every single product you can imagine is very dependent on fo…

Scale tends to be a bit of a chicken and the egg problem.

regardless, i agree, we aren't totally killing fossil fuels anytime soon.

on the other hand, we don't need to. A reduction in demand by 75% would be world changing, and looks a lot more plausible than no fossil fuels ever.

Re: Global shortage has led to motor oil rationing at Costco

#157

Post by bigstrat2003 »

dietr1ch wrote: post #95
diydsp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liters are not SI units. Metric isn't magic. It's not ergnomic nor designed around the human body or everyday experiences. It started arbitrary. Then was defined as in terms of the wavelength of radiation from krypton-86. (the meter was 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of that particular transition to match the original arbitrary metal bar) Then they based it on the distance light travels in an arbitrary amount of time (1/29…

I didn't say it was SI units, but it's easily convertible to them. Metric isn't magic, but it's a cohesive set of legos that can be transformed easily without requiring messy arithmetic and hard to memorise scale constants. Are you not pretending people use the modern, most-precise definitions in the day-to-day just to give yourself a stab at claiming that Metric is awful? Non-metric would face the same dilemma when…

> I guarantee you you would be able to adapt without any problem.

I guess it depends on how you define "problem". It took me years (probably a decade or so) to get good at estimating measurements. I would expect that to relearn how to estimate using metric units would take a decent portion of that (though probably not all). That is a very real cost to me if we were to adopt metric units. Meanwhile, metric also confers no benefit to me (ease of conversion math is irrelevant when I carry a calculator in my pocket, and I've learned the conversions I need in everyday life). So the cost-benefit analysis of switching to metric would be negative for my usage.

But more to the point, it's fucking rude to come in here as you did and call people "uncivilized" for something as petty and meaningless as which units of measurement they use.

Re: Global shortage has led to motor oil rationing at Costco

#158

Post by formerly_proven »

angry_octet wrote: post #131
tw04 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine if there is oil in the electric motors that is “lifetime” but test really probably 300k miles, so if you drive the car into the ground, you probably would want to service that at some point, assuming they are serviceable without destruction.

There's no oil in electric motors. The only significant oil is for the reduction gearbox, but as it doesn't change gears the wear is very low. First change will pull out some metal I'd guess, quality of machining dependent. Every 60000km/2Y, 1-2 litres. Batteries may be immersed in a high dielectric thermal fluid, which will experience some breakdown but over a long time period, more than 10Y.

> There's no oil in electric motors.

Many EVs use hybrid water/oil cooling, typically water for the stator and oil mist/spray for the rotor and exposed parts of the windings.

Re: Global shortage has led to motor oil rationing at Costco

#159

Post by nkurz »

dietr1ch wrote: post #7
pjdesno wrote: post #2

What kind of vehicle takes 10 quarts of oil for a single oil change?

That's 11.3L for the civilised audience. For reference, my 3.6L 6-cyl boxer needs about 6.5L according to my service notes.

Umm, no? A liter is slightly larger than a quart, so 10 quarts is about 9.5L.

For reference, did you mess this up yourself or did it require AI?

Re: Global shortage has led to motor oil rationing at Costco

#160

Post by taneq »

dietr1ch wrote: post #15
sdcfgy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 3 cylinder 1.0 litre Citroen takes exactly half that. Interesting.

But that's an inline engine, right? I think a model based on engine layout, displacement/cylinder, and cylinder count might be quite good at predicting the necessary oil (and will tell you when your car uses a bit too much compared to everyone else).

You’d need year of manufacture too. There’s been a trend towards larger oil capacities in order to increase service intervals.
Post reply on HN