Keep in mind it’s a hybrid - and typically hybrid engines don’t see high loads or a lot of idling, but they do see lots of start-stop. A Toyota hybrid engine rarely ever sees redline, and there’s measures taken to ensure the ICE side warms up quickly to primarily reduce emissions but to get to operating temp quicker.
I care for a car that sees a lot of use as an Uber and while I can get away with 0W-20, I chose to run a thicker oil since it does fall into “severe” service, into Toyota’s wording that thicker oil can protect better for those use cases. Toyota does for the new Dynamic Force engines say thicker oil is A-OK for the rest of the world. The oil pump is not electric - the volute chamber is controlled by a PWM solenoid. it does leave their Japanese/Thai/Kentucky/W. Virginia engine plants with 0W-16/8 however.
In my opinion:
0W-20 is adequate, and you won't see any problems. 0W-20 is ok, if you will be selling the car within 5 years.
But 5W-30 is optimal, if you love the car and want to keep it for over a decade and go 200k to 400k miles.
If there is a bad accident on the highway a few miles up ahead, and cars are going super slow in the bumper to bumper traffic behind it,
with AC on and temperatures outside are in the high 90's, and the backup takes 1 to 2 hours with idling and stop and go traffic, and temperature gauge on dashboard is going past the half way mark even though cooling system is healthy, I feel so much safer having a thick 5W-30 oil in the engine with HTHS >= 3.2, with Fram Ultra oil and air filters with 99%+ efficiency @ 20 microns, and also knowing that my oil is < 4,000 miles old.
When I look around and see a new Toyota Sienna with the 0W-16 with the 10k oil change interval and low 50% efficiency Toyota fiIters,
I think about how much more protection my engine is getting than the other family's engine in the Sienna who is following the owners manual's oil viscosity, 10k oil change interval, and using OEM filters..
I know most of you will say it won't matter, but it does give me an extra feeling of safety and knowledge that my engins's wear and oil consumption will stay at 0 this year.
If you've followed Toyota vehicles from about 2007 until present day, you may have noticed that nearly all models all years suffer from oil consumption issues. My theory on that (totally unproven, but just a feeling), is that the 0W-20 + 10k oil change interval + low efficiency Toyota oil filters contribute to this chronic oil consumption. It's a big deal, because in most Toyota models, to rebuild these engines require the engine to be removed from the car, making the job prohibitably expensive. 0W-20 near 10k miles will be sheared down a grade to a 0W-16. The oil will have a lot of particles in it due to the low efficiency Toyota oil filter. The sheered down oil which is thinner than a virgin 0W-20 combined with the wear particles that get in between the moving surfaces with the sheered down thin oil not having enough film thickness will cause extra permanent wear in the high RPM high temperature piston rings, causing oil consumption.
It would be quite an interesting experiment to run same cars with 5W-30, with 4k-5k oil change intervals, and a 99%+ @ 20 microns high efficiency oil filter. Please take this feeling with a grain of salt, as it's unproven, but just a strong feeling I have.
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