Without air your engine cannot perform correctly and you will get lower mileage. The maintenance schedule calls for replacing the air filter at 60k. For me that is about twice too long.

If you live in the southwest area of the US where dust storms are or you put a lot of miles on, check your filter more often. Some say you can just shake the dust out or blow it out with compressed air but the best way is to replace it. Blowing it out with compressed air can actually introduce holes in the filter and shaking it out you don’t get the stuff embedded into the filter.

This mess is the result of running through a sand storm and giant tumble weed in Arizona. I had cleaned the mess out of the grill but neglected to look at the air filter