Response from Phillip 66:
Hey Jeff!
Unfortunately, there’s not anything I can share about the specific formulation changes, as you probably expected. Basically, they played around with certain anti-wear elementals until they were able to achieve better results than the previous formulation that included liquid titanium. This was in large part due to the consolidation of the GT-1 Max and GT-1 dexos1 lines, and to better prepare for the ILSAC GF-6/API SP changes. There was nothing wrong with liquid titanium, but from what I gather, it was challenging to work with in conjunction with certifications.
With so many of those required certifications in the passenger car game, there isn’t a lot of room for variation, so we can’t claim significant performance advantages over any of our competitors without a lot of research and testing. I agree that marketing is, in large part, the biggest difference. The additive package will always be unique, but again, not in a way that we can claim significant improvements. The only other option for us is gather testimonials from long-time customers and continue putting a lot of time and effort into our R&D. We do a lot of testing on our products and stay up-to-date with trends just like our competitors. Our level of support for our products is something I’ll always be proud of, since I’m a part of it, and I think we have an advantage on that front.
I’d like us to design and publish competitive benchmarking data with our passenger car line versus competitor products. We did something similar for our heavy duty diesel line recently, and it was great. Definitely helped the salespeople and us.
Feel free to reach out with any questions you have, and if we can answer them, we certainly will!
Thank you,
Haley Barrows
Lubricants Technical Services – Product Specialist