My 2017 Ford Escape is supposed to have an oil change between 5 and 10 thousand miles and has a warning light (according to the manual) when you have 5% left on your oil life. I just never have waited on that light to come on.:laughing: Ford calls it an "Intelligent Oil Life Monitor".
BMW introduced that nonsense back in the 2000s, as I've mentioned, when they started including oil changes in their free maintenance plans. They even went so far as to proclaim some components, like differentials and automatic transmissions, "lubed for life". They were, for the life of the warranty. By the time 36,000 miles rolled around, there was so much sludge accumulated in the automatic transmissions you ran a real risk of stirring it up and blocking passages if you did try to change it. And if you decided to do it anyway, the officla juice was over thirteen dollars a quart, and since the torque converter didn't have a drain plug, you had to change the 7.5 quarts the thing held twice to get anything close to a full oil swap. Not long after that, they did away with dip sticks so that you could actually check the engine oil level, and then came run flat tires. All perfect "advances" in technology, as long as you get rid of the things before the warranty expired.
Yes, the base stock of modern oils, and the new additives, really do keep the oil from breaking down in viscosity. But they do nothing to keep particulate contamination at bay, or to neutralize the acid that forms in the oil over time. So when you decide to go with the factory recommended oil change of 10,000, 15,000, or 20,000 miles, don't be surprised if you find the engine in need of repairs before it gets much over 50,000 or 60,000 miles. That's why when you get ready to sell your $65,000 Ultimate Driving Machine with 55,000 miles on it, you'll bet maybe $35,000 for it, and probably much less. That's because the poor devil that buys it'll be dumping big money into the thing just to keep it running...
:2cents: