New Mercedes, VW and BMW approvals: what has changed?

The common belief is that the bigger the approval number on the can, the newer and better the oil. Sellers are happy to encourage the idea: “Your book says 229.5? Take 229.71, it’s a newer approval, even better.” It sounds logical, but carmakers’ approvals don’t work like that — and since 0W-20 oils arrived, this mistake has become a great deal more expensive.

What an approval is and why carmakers keep inventing them is explained in detail in the article what are oil approvals. Its main point still holds: an approval is not a measure of quality but a narrow specialisation of the oil for particular engines. After 229.51, 507 00 and Longlife-04, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and BMW added more than a dozen new numbers to their lists, mostly for the new generation of turbocharged engines with particulate filters. First a cheat sheet, then the explanations.

Mercedes-Benz: from 229.5 to 229.71

Approvals 229.1 and 229.3 belong to the cars of the 1990s and 2000s; 229.3 is still kept in the lists for older engines. After that, Mercedes’ passenger-car approvals split into three branches.

1. The full-SAPS branch (oils with the usual content of sulphated ash, phosphorus and sulphur). The “classic” here is still 229.5, a fuel-economy oil at ACEA A3/B4 level. In 2017 came 229.6: based on the ACEA A5/B5 class, with a lowered high-temperature viscosity (HTHS 2.9-3.5 mPa·s), usually 0W-30 or 5W-30 oils.

2. The low-SAPS branch (for cars with a particulate filter). Here the chain goes like this: 229.31, then MB 229.51, then 229.52 — a little stricter than 229.51, based on ACEA C3, usually 5W-30. All three are still in the lists, and 229.52 is the usual choice for Mercedes diesels of the 2010s and for many petrol engines. Alongside them came 229.61, a low-SAPS fuel-economy approval, as a rule for 0W-30 oils at ACEA C2 level.

3. The 0W-20 generation. Approvals 229.71 and 229.72 are low-SAPS oils at ACEA C5 level, in practice 0W-20. The first 229.71 oils appeared in September 2018, for engines such as the OM654 diesel and the M256 petrol engine (later the M254 as well). Today it is 0W-20 that goes into most new Mercedes petrol and diesel engines at the factory.

And now the main thing. A 229.71 oil in an engine designed for 229.5 is not an “upgrade” but a risk. The older engines were designed for oil with an HTHS of no less than 3.5 mPa·s, that is, for a thicker oil film in the heavily loaded components, and 0W-20 simply won’t give them that film. The other way round, it depends on what the manufacturer writes: for some engines built for 229.71 (that same OM654) Mercedes also allows 229.52, for others it doesn’t. Take the number from the service book, not from the shelf.

Trucks: what is DTFR?

At the end of 2021 Daimler split into Mercedes-Benz Group and Daimler Truck, and the truck company renamed its approvals Daimler Truck Fluid Recommendations, DTFR for short. The new format has applied since 1 April 2023: MB 228.3 is now DTFR 15B110, 228.5 is DTFR 15B120 and 228.51 is DTFR 15C110.

It is only a new name, not new requirements: an oil with MB 228.51 and an oil with DTFR 15C110 are one and the same. The old numbers went on being printed on cans for a while, so you will find both names on sale. The passenger-car 229.x approvals were not touched by the renaming.

Volkswagen: 504/507, 508/509 and 511

Remember the note on 503 00 in the description of VAG approvals, “prohibited for cars of earlier model years”? History has repeated itself almost word for word, only this time with 508 00 and 509 00.

The old 503 00 and 506 00 stopped being the benchmark for new cars long ago. From the mid-2000s their place was taken by VW 504 00 (petrol engines) and VW 507 00 (diesels): LongLife III oils, from the 2007 model year the main ones for most of the group’s cars with a flexible service interval. This pair is probably still the one the group’s cars ask for most often. Some diesels with unit injectors are exceptions; for those, check the documentation for your car.

For newer engines (the first of them went on sale at the end of 2015; later they include the EA211 evo and EA288 evo) the group wrote a new pair, VW 508 00 and 509 00: 0W-20 with an HTHS of no less than 2.6 mPa·s, against 3.5 mPa·s for 504 00 and 507 00. Oil to 508 00 / 509 00 must not go into engines that need 504 00 or 507 00 — the producers of oils approved to these standards warn about it in so many words.

VW 511 00, on the other hand, is a separate branch, not the next step after 508/509. It is a 0W-40 oil at ACEA C3 level for the group’s most powerful petrol engines (4.0 TFSI V8, V10, W12) in the Audi RS models, Lamborghini and Bentley. An ordinary Golf has no use for 511 00, even if it is the biggest number.

What about Porsche?

Porsche has approvals of its own. The long-standing A40 (0W-40, 5W-40, 5W-50, full-SAPS oils) remains for many older petrol engines. Newer models require C20 (0W-20), C30 (0W-30) or C40: a low-SAPS 0W-40, resistant to LSPI (low-speed pre-ignition in turbocharged engines), for engines with a particulate filter. C40 often goes hand in hand with VW 511 00, and for cars from the 2021 model year Porsche specifies 0W oils only.

BMW: the Longlife “ladder”

At BMW the numbers grow with the years, which makes it especially tempting to see them as a ladder. They aren’t one. Longlife-98 (cars up to 2002) has long been considered obsolete. Longlife-01 (petrol engines without a particulate filter) and Longlife-04 (diesels with a diesel particulate filter, and later petrol engines with a particulate filter too) are still current; we covered them in our description of BMW approvals. After them came:

• Longlife-12 FE — 0W-30, for certain engines;
• Longlife-14 FE+ — 0W-20 for petrol engines, now largely superseded;
• Longlife-17 FE+ — 0W-20 for petrol engines with and without a particulate filter, later for some diesels too;
• Longlife-19 FE — 0W-30, mainly for diesels, recommended for many cars that used to run on Longlife-04;
• Longlife-22 FE++ — 0W-12 for certain petrol engines.

Note the word “many” in the line about Longlife-19 FE: not all. At BMW a bigger number does not mean “suits everything” — each approval is granted only for particular engines, and what decides is not the number but the documentation for your car.

“Approved” or “meets”: how to read the label

How “meets the requirements” differs from a genuine approval was covered in the article on approvals: the first is a claim made by the oil producer itself, the second is an entry in the carmaker’s list. I will only add what a genuine approval looks like on the can: next to the number stands the word “approved”, “approval” or the German “Freigabe” (at Mercedes, “MB-Freigabe”): “VW 508 00 approved”, “BMW Longlife-17 FE+ approval”, “Porsche C30 approved”. The same number after “meets the requirements”, “suitable for” or “recommended for” is the same old self-declared compliance, just in other words.

A separate word on “exceeds”, the marketers’ favourite: you can exceed whatever you like, but it won’t get you into a carmaker’s list. For a car under warranty and for sensitive engines (and 0W-20 oils for 508 00 or 229.71 are exactly that case), what matters first is the entry in the list. If the service book names an approval and the can says only “meets the requirements”, that is not the same thing, whatever the seller tells you.

Where to check an approval today

1. The service book or the owner’s manual. As before, this is the main source: the approval is recorded for a particular engine and model year, not for the make in general.

2. The carmaker’s list. Mercedes-Benz keeps a public list of approved oils for cars at operatingfluids.mercedes-benz.com, and for trucks at bevo.mercedes-benz-trucks.com.

3. The label. No approval number on the can means no approval, and a number next to the words “meets the requirements” is not an approval yet.

4. The make’s official service centre. VW and BMW approvals are easiest to confirm at an authorised service centre: they will tell you what is recorded for your engine.

Let me say it once again: oil is chosen not by the number, newer or older, but by the engine. A new approval is like the key to a new door: it won’t open your old lock, however shiny it is. And if the seller still insists that the newer number is “definitely better”, ask him who will pay for the engine rebuild.

Further reading:

• 0W-20, 0W-16, 0W-8: is the oil too thin for your engine?
• Opel without GM: dexos or Stellantis approvals?