Energy Conserving Discontinued

[supercity]

Is SN GF-5 far more fuel efficient than GF-4?

API pulls the plug on Energy Conserving

Quote:
The American Petroleum Institute will discontinue licensing the use of the “Energy Conserving” designation with its API SL and API SM gasoline engine oil categories. This action will be effective Dec. 30, 2016, and does not cover API SN oils that have earned the “Resource Conserving” designation – although they could be on the watch list next.

 

[Klutch9]

I'm guessing they are doing this because SN has been the dominant and current specification for 5 years now.

 

[Joe90_guy]

In theory, for a given viscosity grade, GF-5 is better than GF-4 for fuel economy. However in reality, the difference in FE would be marginal. In fact, speaking personally, I'd say they were pretty much identical!

The US is ruthlessly Stalinist when it comes to the engine oil market. It's out with the old and in with the new as quickly as possible. This is followed by a process of 'obsoleting' (which is what you're seeing here), followed in turn by a process of 'banning'.

Any potential resistance to The New is instantly squished by saying everything is 'backwardly compatible' although only God knows how they can say this because as far as I can tell, no-one seriously checks this in any meaningful way. If you want to learn The Universal Truth about backward compatibility, try running Lotus 123 under Windows 10!

 

[Garak]

Yes, the older ones are already deprecated on the API website, and have been for a while. I think Joe and I discussed that part of it fairly recently, with the distinction between the ILSAC stuff and the API stuff.

 

[ShotGun429]

We at the Engine shop here use (in our own late model cars) 25-30 year old SH/SG oils given to us free that the Engine Shop stockpiled in the 80's. No issues, I doubt the newer oils would be any if at all better. We are engine guys here and we know....