Servicing of Plug in Hybrid

[Gordon_Mac]

I have a GLA250e which I bought new in 2020, and love the car. I've always had it serviced by Mercedes, but now I'm starting to question their servicing philosophy. I recently booked it in for its 3rd year service with the car having now done a total 0f 19,500 miles, of which only 7000 has been done on petrol . During the service they want to change the spark plugs and the air filter. Surely this should be based on the number of petrol miles covered and not the total miles? Modern plugs can easily do 20,000 miles and more with no problem and air filters, under normal conditions, the same. In these days of conserving resources, can anyone explain the logic please?

 

[malcolm E53 AMG]

The only logic is making money you’ll find a lot of garages don’t want to talk about or deviate from the manufacturers service schedule but I think it’s wasteful on materials and resource that‘s why if I’m using a garage I usually go with a schedule of AABAAB servicing if you do low miles

 

[Jason63]

The spark plug change interval on a Lexus RX hybrid is 120k miles!

The MB 12 month interval is a very arbitrary figure. For low mileage cars it is excessive, modern oil can easily last 2 or more years. However 12,000 miles on engine oil is pushing it if you want the engine to last well beyond 100k miles.

However, servicing requirements are a complex balance of the vehicle usage. I think Renault at one time had servicing based on number of engine starts (which I think is probably a very good measure). BMW used to have a complex condition based servicing (CBS) regime where the car figured out when it needed an oil change, air filter, etc. The problem with that was you were always going to the garage because nothing lined up.

In the old days the service book with the car used to state that the service interval was based on normal usage and usually recommended you halve the interval with extreme usage (dusty environments, hot environments, a lot of stop start driving). Essentially normal usage was actually optimal usage!

Anyway what you end up with MB is a regular (easier to remember) regime that in many cases over services the car, and in some cases isn't enough.

If you know what you are doing you could manage the servicing but when it comes to resale most buyers will have a problem with that and the vehicle will be worth less. So that only works if you are keeping the vehicle forever.

 

[malcolm E53 AMG]

The BMW CBS does help in some respects with low mileage cars if you only cover <6k miles over two years it does fit with their servicing regime with ‘longlife oil’, - but spark plugs, pollen filters and air filters will be still be changed far too early - I’ve suffered this with BMW franchises and deal with the servicing myself now with the odd dealer stamp along the way

 

[houseboss2]

With MB service, you are able to deselect the excessive items. In your case, spark plug change and probably air filter. You will still have full digital service records showing as and when these items are undertaken.