I have a theory that these environmental regulations at least to some degree defeat themselves. They make engines more complicated, so more fragile and harder for an amateur (edit: or any professional who isn't their own brand repair shops) to service. They encourage smaller-block engines with turbos and compressors which makes the engine more short-lived. They produce stuff like throttle-hang and gear selection recommendations optimized for driving economy, not engine longevity (or driving experience, for that matter).

On the whole, they seem to be contributing to this movement of taking power away from the end consumer and making your product more and more like a subscription (this goes further than the car industry, of course). I do realize that it's important to cut down on pollution! And maybe this kind of stuff has been studied... although I imagine it would be very hard to do accurately.

Imagine if a car manufacturer would provide service guides, easily-accessible part diagrams and competitively priced spare parts. Imagine if they optimized for longevity and if the handbook that came with the car had more technical details than it had warnings about how doing any kind of maintenance yourself will result in a) your death and b) a voided warranty. That would be pretty nice.

Did I hear right that some new vehicles are claiming 20,000km service intervals?

I know I’ve seen 15,000 service intervals.

This is the minimum to maintain the warranty for the first 3 / 5 / 7 seven years whatever.

If you change the oil at every 5000k and never turn off a cold engine - all petrol engines have fuel wash down at ignition cut, but much worse when the engine is come - you should expect 500,000+ plus kilometres out of an engine barring any metallurgical problems or manufacturing defects.

Petrol makes a poor lubricant for engines, and fucks engine oil. The less of it in engine oil the better.

Modern engines and fully synthetic oils are way better than the their counterparts from my youth, but 15,000+ kilometres service intervals are less about what engines need and more about what the folks over in marketing need.

Edit: I did see a second hand commercial diesel van recently that had met all service requirements for the warranty period, x number of years or 90,000 kilometres.

This meant it had logged exactly two oil changes since new, and the third had just been done at 90,000.

90,000k on two oil changes. Wild.