We’ve had our 2006 Pontiac Vibe for about two and a half years now and we recently passed 80,000km (just shy of 50,000 miles). Overall the car has been working well for us. We’ve had no mechanical issues with the car and the only real cost has been regular oil changes. I think we’re soon due for a brake job though. We still have the original all-seasons on the car after 80,000km but we’ve put winter tires on for two of the three winters the car has gone through. Even with winters, the all-seasons tires still have around 55,000km.

Our average fuel consumption for 2008 is currently at 8.34L/100km (~ 28 MPG). This isn’t very good in my opinion but it does include winter driving with the snow tires on. In the winter with the snow tires, we’re getting around 9.0L/100km (~ 26.5 MPG). In the summer months we’re down around 7.5L/100km (~ 31.4 MPG) which is a little better. It’s interesting because the US DoE has the 2006 Pontiac Vibe at 31 MPG (7.6L/100km) for highway with their readjusted numbers. My problem still stems from the fact this car was rated at 34 MPG (6.9L/100km) for highway when we bought it. The best fuel economy I’ve ever achieved in that car was a one-off 6.7L/100km (~ 35.1 MPG). That was when we were driving on secondary roads averaging 90km/h (~55 MPH), true “highway” driving. I also annoyed the snot our of The Boss on this drive as I was putting into practice some of the driving techniques I’ve learned from reading ecomodder.com.

With some driving style modifications, I think this car should be able to do consistently in the 6.8L/100km to 7.0L/100km range in the summer. It’s very noticeable though when you turn on the AC as the little 1.8L engine has to rev higher to deal with the added load. This definitely contributes to worse fuel economy. One thing to keep in mind is that the defrost settings on this car also turn on the AC.

One other gripe about the car is that there is a very thin layer of paint. It seems that everything causes a small paint chip. I think if you sneezed while standing within 10 feet of the car it would get a paint chip. To try and keep the rust at bay, I bought one of those colour matched paint pens from the dealership and every couple months I have to dab a few more chips. Nothing major but it’s one maintenance annoyance I could do without.

We’re probably going to keep this car for many more years. It will probably get relegated to the “second car” in a few years as it’s not quite big enough for a growing family.

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Well, it’s almost been a year since we got the 2006 Pontiac Vibe. We still think it’s a decent car for us around town. This past Christmas we discovered that it’s just barely big enough for us to take the whole family on a road trip. More on that later.

After about 32500km, we’re averaging about 8.37L/100km. Since about 80% of that is what we would consider highway driving, we’re not overly thrilled with the real world gas mileage of the Vibe. Now that we have winter tires on and the air is cooler, we’ve been getting just over 9.0L/100km. It hasn’t even gotten really cold here yet as I think the lowest temperature over night was about -15 degrees Celcius.

As for the size of the car. We have a large dog and she basically takes up 3/4 of the trunk area. On top of that, with our munchkin in the infant carrier in the back, the passenger seat is too close to the dash to be comfortable for a long trip. So we had the car well packed for our trip this Christmas. Not too much in the way of weight though, about the same as 3 adults and light luggage. On the way out, we averaged 8.5L/100km. Not too bad. The only comment is that the car is definitely underpowered for passing. With this relatively minor load it had a heck of a time getting up to speed to pass on two-lane roads. It can be done but you had to turn off the overdrive and get a good run (ie get the car into the 4500-5000 rpm range) on the car you wanted to pass.

On the way back we had a rooftop carrier with some extra weight, probably equivalent to 4 adults and light luggage. Holy crap that made a huge difference on the gas mileage though. We averaged about 11.5L/100km! Our worst was a stretch through Quebec where we had a head wind and I was trying to drive too fast (Screaming munchkin, Quebec drivers, middle of nowhere, etc.). That lead to 296km on just over 35L or 12.1L/100km. Yikes! The biggest problem (other than the rooftop carrier) was that the car couldn’t stay in overdrive. It was constantly kicking down into 3rd gear when I had the cruise control on. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t trying to break any land speed records. I was driving at a speed slightly slower than you would normally see on those roads. Heck, the two cops I passed weren’t interested in me at all.

On top of that, I discovered a trait about the car that I don’t especially like. When it does kick down from you pressing harder on the throttle, it takes an exceptionally long time to go back to overdrive when you let off of the throttle. There were times where I had to almost lift my foot completely off of the throttle just to get the car to go back into overdrive. Damn slushboxes. When I used the kick down button, it wasn’t as bad since the car would go back into overdrive almost immediately after you press it again.

Unfortunately it looks like there is a minivan in our future if we have another rug rat.

As far as the Pontiac Vibe goes, it’s likely going to become our second car in the future and go into the high mileage club with me taking it back and forth to work (110km/day round trip). 32500km in the first year. Hopefully it will last at least 10 years of driving like that!

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Another update on our 2006 Pontiac Vibe real world gas mileage. We’re now over 24000km (damn, 24000km/8months = 3000km/month or 36000km/year and that’s pretty much just the Boss driving it back and forth to work.) and the gas mileage is getting better. Of course, it’s near the end of the summer now and the car doesn’t have to heat up, etc. Suprisingly, even with the air conditioner on it still gets about 7.4L/100km (or about 31.5mpg).

Oh yeah, in case you were reading my previous 2006 Pontiac Vibe gas mileage post, I goofed on my conversions from metric to US mpg. I was actually converting to imperial mpg. That’s what I get for not paying attention to the online tool I was using. I’ll be going back to that post to update the numbers so they make more sense since not many people in North America use imperial mpg as a measure.

Just for the record (and so I don’t have to go searching for them again) the conversions are as follows:

US mpg –> L/100km = 235.215/US mpg
Imp. mpg –> L/100km = 282.4809363/Imp. mpg

Anyways, the best gas mileage yet was 6.96L/100km (33.8mpg) just last week. It wasn’t super hot, low 20s Celcius, and the car was only really driven to and from work. Again, it’s pretty much highway driving according to what the car manufacturers use as the definition of highway driving. Average speed is just over 80km/h with a few sharp curves/turns and some slower driving through town.

The Pontiac Vibe just doesn’t do well on what I consider real world highway driving - about 110km/h with the cruise control set and straight, relatively flat roads. That’s my commute and I was getting much worse gas mileage than the Boss. Maybe I should give it another run here for a week and see what it does now that the weather is more pleasant than when I was driving the Pontiac Vibe back in February.

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We’re over 20,000km on the 2006 Pontiac Vibe now and the gas mileage is getting better. Even with the warmer temperatures and use of the air conditioning a fair bit our average gas mileage is 8.29L/100km (or about 28.4mpg if I did the math right) over about 18,000km. We’ve been tracking the Pontiac Vibe gas mileage since we bought the car and we keep entering the data into a spreadsheet. Makes it really easy to see how various things affect the gas mileage.

Currently the worst gas mileage we have gotten with the Vibe was 9.5L/100km (24.7mpg) (in mid February) and the best gas mileage was 7.1L/100km (33.1mpg) (in mid May and June). I also track a 5 fillup trend in my spreadsheet which makes it a little bit easier to see seasonal gas mileage. For example, the 5 fillups to the end of February averaged 9.0L/100km where as the 5 fillups to the end of June averaged 7.4L/100km.

If I ever get around to it, I’d like to put all of this information online as it’s very difficult to find real world gas mileage information. Since I’ve been tracking for all of my vehicles, I think it might be of use to someone in the future who is looking for more realistic numbers than what the window stickers say.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, this is a base Pontiac Vibe with an automatic transmission, air conditioning and cruise control. Almost all (90% minimum) of the driving would be considered highway driving. The car typically goes 50+ km one way to work 5 days a week on secondary roads (80km/h speed limit). It sees on average another 150km additional highway driving on the weekends (on 400 series highways in Eastern Ontario).

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Treehugger: Take a Look at West Philadelphia High’s Hybrid

But where are the details on the diesel engine and the electric motor configuration? This is such a big tease right now! The car looks fabulous and sure, the performance is really sweet considering the 50 mpg they mention but where is the information on how I could drop the same electric motor into a car that already has a 1.9L TDI engine?

I can only assume that there would be a number of TDI owners out there that would love to hear about the specifics of how they mated the diesel engine with the electric motor. Heck, I don’t own a TDI but if I knew the details, I might just go buy a TDI to start hacking an electric motor into it.

The only semi-technical notes to be found are that the electric motor is an AC Propulsion 200hp motor (no mention of model but I’ll assume it’s the AC-150 EV Power System). The car is wired up with a regenerative braking systems. Currently it seems that the use of the diesel or electric motor has to be selected manually (manually on the fly or manually on startup?) but they want to do a computer controlled system.

I’d love for someone associated with the project to please provide more details on the mechanical side! I’m really curious and I’d be surprised if I’m the only one!

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We’ve had our Pontiac Vibe for a little over a month now and overall it’s a pretty decent car. It’s quite fun to drive, especially the nifty kick down button that turns off the over drive on the automatic. That little button makes it a lot easier to pass since you don’t have to do the typically gas pedal mash to try and force the transmission to kick down. When the engine is running in the higher RPM range (over about 4500), it has a decent amount of pull.

Other great features are the huge glove box (big enough for a box a Kleenex and a stack of maps in addition to the owner’s manual!), the huge center console storage box and the various other storage compartments scattered around the car. For a car this size, they really made the most of every available space by turning it all into storage. Not only that, the upright driving position makes it really easy to get in and out of the car and there is lots of head room, even for guys taller than (6′1″) me.

Some features that make it fun to drive, other than the kick down button I already mentioned, are the rather stiff suspension and the tight steering. I haven’t driven a lot of small cars but the Pontiac Vibe handles quite well in my opinion. It corners well and doesn’t have too much body roll which keeps it reasonably flat on those highway on/off ramps. The Vibe also has a very small turning radius. I still laugh every time I manouver that car into a small space since I’ve been driving a full sized truck for the last 5 years. A small turning radius isn’t something I’m used to.

Now there is one thing that I would definitely add, a telescoping steering wheel. If you have long legs like me, you’ll end up putting the seat back. The problem with that is you then end up quite far away from the steering wheel. Even with the seat in an upright position, I still have my arms almost completely straight if I want to be able to driving in the standard 10 and 2 position. I can’t drive that way for a long period as it is simply too uncomfortable. A telescoping steering wheel would at least allow me to pull the wheel an inch closer making for a much more comfortable position.

Other interior oddities are the front cup holders (for some reason they are different sizes), the door “arm rest” and console are quite low (meaning they are useless as, well, arm rests) and the radio volume and tuning knobs can be easily confused in the dark when driving.

The rear storage area (trunk?) is a decent size and the rear seats can be folded to provide a huge space. The only gripe I have about the space is the hard plastic floor surface. I’m sure there is a good reason to have it now and then but I’ve yet to find a good reason. We ended up having to buy the rear floor mat because everything you put back there would be constantly sliding around. I guess we could have opted for the cargo net but even having a jug of washer fluid back there was enough to drive us bonkers after only a couple minutes driving.

The last comment I have is on the gauges. They are very bright and super easy to read. The gauges themselves are sunk in quite a bit which makes it difficult for your passenger to sneak a peek at your current speed. There is one indicator light on the Pontiac Vibe that I really don’t understand. It is the “tail lights on” indicator. For some reason the car designers decided it was necessary to inform the driver when their tail lights were on. Basically, this indicator is on all the time when your head lights are on. Personally, I would hope that my tail lights were on and I don’t think it’s necessary to have an indicator light telling me this fact.

One last thing some people might be interested in is the gas mileage. We drive the car on the highway a lot, probably 80% of our driving. After almost 5000km in cold January and February we are averaging about 9.0L/100km. I’m not overly impressed by that number at the moment but if that is the worst we get, I’m going to be quite happy. I’m going to be tracking my gas consumption for a while so hopefully it will get better when the temperatures get back above freezing. Stay tuned for more.

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