2021 Jeep Wranger 4xe road test

Jeep had to tread lightly here with electrifying, and taking the Wrangler into the future without damaging its well-earned reputation as an analog, rough, get down to business off-roader. So they went the plug-in hybrid route.

Video Transcript

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Hey guys, Pras here. I'm in the new Jeep Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrid. Yeah you read that right, you heard that right. This is the Wrangler plug-in hybrid. This is new for Jeep. You know, obviously Wranglers have been traditionally gas and diesel powered and now you have an actual plug-in hybrid. Meaning that it's capable of you know 21 miles of electric range, fully charged. Which is pretty cool.

I think most importantly is to talk about the powertrain. It's a combination of a turbocharged four-cylinder engine that Jeep has, with two electric motors. This produces a very robust 375 horsepower, which is a decent amount. But you know, let me tell you, the combination of electric motor and the two motors and the gas engine-- sorry, the two motors and the gas engine, really give you great, off the line acceleration. The electric motors kick in immediately. You know, and then the gas engine will kick in when it, when it needs to, when you need more power. But around town, it's super quiet. It's amazing.

I actually like it a lot in terms of how quiet it is and it's pretty unobtrusive too when the gas powered engine kicks in. It doesn't necessarily jolts you, it just sort of happens. You hear it but it's not that loud. You know, so you get that 375 horsepower figure. Which is quite a bit. And I think I mentioned the 21 miles electric range fully charged, gets you around a 49 eMPG for this car. Now combined, it's only about 20. But you know that's because of the added weight and things like that. But if you're driving a lot of urban, urban types of commutes less than 20 miles, you're on electric. You're doing pretty well.

So anyway, the powertrain's great. This is a Jeep. It is trail rated. So that means that there are-- you know, there is a full-time four wheel drive system that you can engage. It's pretty cool that you can actually go off-road in this thing. And you can actually engage electric motor off-road as well, and it'll work. And it says, Jeep says that it treads lightly and efficiently on the tough terrain, so that's, that's pretty cool. I haven't had a chance to do that, but I've seen other precedents where people have driven these cars off road, the 4XE's, and it's been pretty cool. Before I continue further I want to get my colleague Rick Newman's thoughts on this, so Rick's going to hop in the front seat and give us his thoughts.

RICK NEWMAN: We're in the [? leafy ?] suburbs on a beautiful spring day and this is very genteel, it's very refined, I mean it's perfectly quiet. So it works in the suburbs, if we were in the city we'd be overwhelmed by noise, but of course you're not supposed to drive a Jeep in the city. I like the quietness of it. My question is with, really with, the technology. So I didn't even know anybody was making hybrids anymore. I thought that the newest thing was just make a full on electric. So General Motors has the Hummer full on electric, right?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah, yeah.

RICK NEWMAN: And that goes-- that has, supposedly has at least 300 miles of range, and all kinds of power statistics and Jeep is still working on a hybrid? I mean this-- isn't a hybrid like circa 2010?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: You know, it really is. But Rick I got to, I got to tell you, I think this is the-- I think that it was that it was a good first effort from Jeep. You know ten years later.

RICK NEWMAN: Maybe that's the point, is it's their first effort.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: But it's not bad!

RICK NEWMAN: But you would think that Jeep is sort of like the last brand to become electrified, since it's since it's just an old school brand as it is. So I guess, give them points for trying? I guess?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah but you know, giving their customer base what they want. You know, with a, they want to be green. When-- look if you're just driving around town, commuting less than 20 miles. You can do it on an electric motor. Right?

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah. Yeah, I suppose.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: And it's quiet. We have the top down. It's not bad right?

RICK NEWMAN: Well yeah, you know it's interesting. You normally you get so much extra noise from the top down. And it's like, well there's no engine noise so-- it almost means that the convertible noise, you almost, you don't even notice it.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Right, I don't. And it's you know, and I found the right to be smooth. I don't know what you think about this, in your brief drive here, but I'm curious to get your thoughts on just sort of the drive of this thing.

RICK NEWMAN: The ride, you know I'm not a fan of the drive-- the driveability of Jeeps, because you're so high. You know I like the small planted cars. It's fine. So I probably, the cost benefit equation here is not so favorable. What you're going to pay extra for what you're going to get, but I guess what Jeeps doing is, they're demonstrating they have the technology, it's coming and even if this is like a starter package at least they're saying we're on it.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah and I think that that's exactly right, they're going to come out with an all electric Wrangler right, they've even announced that right. But this is sort of the first taste of that. And having a first taste for me, I'm actually pretty impressed.

RICK NEWMAN: How does it compare with the Mach-E?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Well the Mach-E is a much more polished--

RICK NEWMAN: Mustang, I should say the Mustang Mach-E.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: The Mustang Mach-E is a much more polished product, it's all electric. You know, it's just there's no gas motor, right? It's all electric. You have the batteries down way below, it [? tails ?] like a, like a car. This is much more truck-y, but at the same time I don't hate it either.

RICK NEWMAN: We're not bothering anybody, that's for sure.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: I drove over the GW bridge, I was in, you know Alpine, you know Englewood, New Jersey. Drove to one of my favorite burger places right on the water, and I'm driving-- and it's a big place for where people ride bikes.

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah, I know the area.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: And I drove by them-- and I drove by them, and they're like, that's the electric Wrangler. Like--

RICK NEWMAN: Really?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Because they heard this whir, I drove right by a bunch of guys on their bikes. They're sitting there kind of like parked, hanging out and it's like this whir, and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's a Wrangler? So there's there's some buzz, and of course Rick, you know, you know the deal. I drive around, every Wrangler guy's just giving me thumbs up, just giving me the whatever the sign that they do.

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Flashing the lights, you know.

RICK NEWMAN: I mean, it is a community.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah. It's the thing you mentioned Rick, it's like they're selling a lifestyle so imagine that Jeep lifestyle, plus I'm going green.

RICK NEWMAN: OK.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: You know.

RICK NEWMAN: I'm intrigued, I'll say that.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: That was Rick Newman, my colleague at Yahoo Finance. That's, that's pretty much kind of like-- just echoing kind of how I feel about this car. So yeah. This is a great first effort in my opinion, for Jeep to make the Wrangler an electrified version. You know there are people that-- and there are customers that want a Jeep, but they want to be clean and green and they want to take it to you know, national parks and things like that and be friendly to the planet. I think this is the way for Jeep to do that and I have to say, it's a very seamless system here.

You know, want to know one thing, there are three drive modes, right? There's hybrid, which I'm in right now, which basically the system will determine what's best in terms of you know, kinda skews more towards electric when the battery is mostly charged. There is electric only, which will of course just use electric power for all the drive that you do. Now if you go above a certain highway speed, it will kick it into gas powered, gas turbocharged four. And then there's eSave which allows you to-- you can engage eSave and what that does is it lets you save the battery for when you're actually in an urban setting, or a place where you want to use all-electric power. Those three features, or settings, work pretty well.

I like hybrid and eSave, I think those are great. Hybrid's mostly electric mode anyway, so it sort of, at least it feels that way. And it's fine, it's great, the Jeep has plenty of power and even more when the turbo four kicks in. And electric mode is fine for, you know going around town, doing some errands, dropping the kids off at school, going to work even. So I think all in all, a great effort by Jeep. And let's, let's be honest, why do I love Jeeps? It's because at least with Wranglers, is the go anywhere, Inspector Gadget type of deals, where you can take the roof off, you know, take the doors off, put down the windshield. You can just transform this thing into whatever you want it to be.

And that's what's so cool about Jeeps, and that's why their fan base loves the Wranglers so much. It is an exceptional community of people, they have all kinds of enthusiasts meetups and forums and the amount of custom parts you can get for these Wrangler is mind boggling. So Jeeps really-- a nod to them here, with the ability to not only perform these customizations and the things they love with the Wrangler, but also take it to the 21st century with the green electric battery powered cars.