Lubrizol: Ushering in a New Era of Engine Oil Performance

Throughout the North American marketplace, passenger car engine oils are about to change. ILSAC GF-7, the next performance specification for such oils, goes into effect on March 31, 2025, and will elevate the performance required for every bottle of oil sold throughout the continent moving forward.

For today’s vehicles, this is good news—GF-7 features significant performance upgrades that help best enable modern engine hardware, developed by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to meet stringent new fuel economy standards while delivering enhanced durability.

For automotive professionals of all stripes, it’s worth digging deeper into what this development means for the transportation landscape, as well as what is required to formulate engine oils that meet forward-thinking performance standards. Let’s explore:

Raising the Bar for Engine Oils

GF-7 will necessitate that new lubricants contribute to enhanced fuel consumption rates, as well as enhanced fuel economy retention over the course of the oil drain. Among all performance enhancements in this new specification, fuel economy figures make the biggest leap.

But those are not the only required changes. GF-7 will further require lubricants to deliver heightened levels of overall engine protection. It will measure the oil’s ability to prevent low-speed pre-ignition (LSPI), piston deposit, and premature timing chain wear over extended periods.

These are important attributes. Consider LSPI—this phenomenon is a potentially catastrophic problem unique to today’s common gasoline direct injection (GDI) and turbocharged GDI (TGDI) engines. Modern engine oils are essential in preventing LSPI, thus making them an important solution for enabling tomorrow’s hardware to meet its full potential.

Elsewhere, the specification calls for improvements in all other key critical performance metrics, including deposit control, seal compatibility, wear and corrosion protection, oil pumpability, and catalyst compatibility. Taken collectively, these requirements will help ensure that today’s and tomorrow’s engines remain clean, deliver maximum efficiency, and remain protected under modern conditions.

Achieving Next-Generation Performance

So, just how will modern oil formulations meet these performance standards?

To best understand, it’s helpful to take a quick look at the anatomy of an engine oil. The products on shelves today are composed of three primary component parts:

• Base oils. As the carrier fluid, the base oil makes up the majority of the formulation and delivers baseline performance. It is the building block for a high-quality oil.

• Additives. Additives are the performance enabler, allowing the finished product to meet operational requirements when in use.

• Viscosity modifiers and pour point depressants. These ensure the final product will deliver consistent flow across a broad range of operational temperatures and climates.

Generally, engine oil producers will utilize high-quality base stocks blended with additives and viscosity modifiers to deliver a reliable end-use product. These components complement each other to create optimized performance that will meet the requirements necessitated by GF-7.

But it is not always so simple. For example, access to the highest-quality base oils is not always a guarantee for engine oil formulators, and that can pose challenges when developing high-performance products. Lower-quality base stocks may not always be adequate for formulating finished fluids to meet GF-7 standards.

Luckily, optimized additive science can make up for these shortcomings. Additive technology is required to meet GF-7 levels of performance no matter the base oil, but an ideal additive should elevate performance across a wide range of base oils. Additionally, elevated additive performance can enable the use of viscosity modifiers (VMs) that help maximize engine durability while achieving the necessary fuel economy requirements of new specifications.

Typically, passenger car engine oils are formulated with VMs that maintain a shear-stability index (SSI) of 35. While higher SSI polymer will shear more easily contributing to small efficiency gains the trade off is that lower SSI polymer will maintain film strength delivering better hardware protection. For example, heavy-duty engine oils for commercial trucks are typically formulated using VMs with an SSI of 25.

But higher-performance additives can change those considerations. Top-tier additives enable finished engine oils to achieve higher fuel economy gains in combination with lower-shear (25 SSI) VMs. This means no compromises when it comes to protection and durability while delivering meaningful fuel economy contributions.

Looking Ahead

GF-7 raises the bar for what modern lubricants can contribute to today’s and tomorrow’s vehicles, and that is great news for the lubricants and transportation industry as a whole.

By leveraging new science to provide new heights in performance and protection, GF-7 will improve efficiency for vehicles of every age. Taken collectively across the vehicle parc in North America, such gains will be significant, and they will have a real impact in benefiting our environment.

Importantly, GF-7 is not the end of the road. Early discussions are already underway about a potential GF-8, an even more rigorous performance specification that will inevitably replace GF-7. New scientific breakthroughs will be required. Ongoing partnerships between technology providers, oil marketers, OEMs, and all stakeholders will help shed light on new needs and new solutions. GF-7 is just part of the story, and an important one, but future needs will be even more demanding.

At Lubrizol, our purpose is to deliver sustainable solutions to advance mobility, improve well-being, and enhance modern life. Our work with GF-7—including our involvement in the development process and our additive technology that enables oil marketers to meet the required performance characteristics—is reflective of that purpose.

We believe in this specification’s importance as another milestone in our industry’s collective journey toward a more sustainable future. To learn more about Lubrizol’s GF-7 solutions, visit www.Lubrizol.com.