Originally Posted By: edyvw
You named all advantages of Mobil, but they still sell you cheaper base oil then PAO base oil.
In some of their products, yes, they use Group III and VISOM. The percentage of what base stock varies by what the intended performance target is.
Quote:
I would not be surprised in XOM sells PAO base stocks to Motul.
Neither would I, they probably do.
Quote:
However, for their product they decided to go with GIII+.
No, for their product they decided to go with a BLEND of base oils that, in the current iteration, contains LESS PAO than it did previously; less than the 50% or so necessary to be classified as "full synthetic" in Germany.
Though I do find it rather amusing that we are discussing this in relation to Castrol, who started the whole group III thing in the first place and probably uses more of it in their products than Mobil does.
Quote:
If it can meet specs it is enough, so why not make more money? Right? So by your argument, M1 GIII+ oil is better then Motul PAO based oil, or RL Ester based oil? Because XOM is largest chemical company? They care about our well being? On the paper I would say that RL is far better then M1, and you pay the price for that.
Actually, on paper, the oil with the most approvals wins. Because it has gone through the most testing and has a verified track record of providing protection under a myriad of conditions, many of them incredibly demanding.
And as noted in the XOM product roadmap, VISOM was designed to be an intermediate product to be used to supplement PAO in current formulations until the products eventually migrate to GTL.... Which is ALSO group III. See, that's the problem with these classifications. PAO is just one type of base oil, as is GTL, VISOM....etc. There are a number of base oils which fall under the group III moniker yet they are not all the same. Similar to how there are many types of esters that classify as group V. But then there are AN's, which ALSO fall under group V.
Does XOM make more money with VISOM than they do with PAO? Arguably, yes. But that doesn't make them an inferior base oil choice. Heck, Castrol is probably buying the PAO that they use in whatever quantity they use it in for GC FROM XOM!!
And XOM being the largest petrochemical company is relevant because of economies of scale. They probably have more engineers on staff than many of the smaller blenders do combined. They have the resources to develop the best product in the world if they wanted to. And how do we know they haven't? You know what they say about assumptions right
At the end of the day, the performance of the product is what speaks to its quality. I personally think the best metric of determining just what that performance is can be gleaned by looking at the OEM testing regiments and using those as a benchmark. That is, the product with the most approvals is arguably the best performing product. In that case, it could be argued that M1 0w-40 and GC carry very similar levels of performance. Mobil has the advantage of also carrying the (very demanding) Porsche approval, which is also carried by PU 5w-40. But for most of what is being discussed here there really is no performance difference between the products that we can see by looking at a PDS or standing around with an ear horn with our hoods open.
