I’m in year three with about 33K miles. We use the car for around town driving, and the average mileage per gallon of fuel consumed is around 196. So we rely on the battery for almost all of our driving. The question is: how does reliance on a battery rather than the internal combustion engine affect the normal wear on a purely internal combustion engine? Do I change oil, plugs etc as if there was no battery?
Chances are, your owner’s manual addresses this situation. You will go by the time-frame guidelines, not the mileage for things like oil changes, and vice versa for things like spark plugs would be my guess.
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I think that the Owner’s Manual/Mfr’s Maintenance Schedule must surely deal with this topic. Make sure that you pay attention to the elapsed time factor for maintenance, and not just to the odometer mileage factor
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The IC engine should last a lot longer, IF you follow the advice of @NYBo and @VDCdriver and read the maintenance recommendations in your owners manual.
We have the regular Prius in the family and have services done every 9mo on average or about 7,000 miles between oil changes. The schedule in the warranty booklet does say not to go more than 1yr between oil changes with a tire rotation every 6mo or 5,000mi.
Costco handles the tire rotations under warranty so it goes into the independent Toyota shop every 6-7K for an oil change and once over. Worth the $55+Tax to know that the car’s in good shape They’re doubtful they’lll even sell Mom a brake job anytime soon and the car’s 12 going on 13yrs old (2010 Prius bought in July '09) We’ve been following this shops advice since 1993 and they haven’t let us down.