Jeep Goes Electric But Is It a Real Jeep

Hey, real quick, what vehicle am I reviewing? Can you tell? Would you have guessed it's the new Jeep Wagoneer S, the first all-electric Jeep for America? But is it a real Jeep? Let's get into that. Now, this is actually an easy question to answer because empirically, yes, it is a Jeep. It's built by Jeep. It's not a rebadged from some other brand owned by the same company. It is definitely a Jeep in that regard, but you wouldn't necessarily know it just looking at it, right? Because if you do cover up that seven-slot grille, which isn't actually even really a grille on this one, it can kind of look like a lot of different cars. It's long and sleek and sporty, a bit of Range Rover maybe even, but definitely not like a Wrangler or a big boxy Grand Wagoneer. If you go around to the side of it, you see like the Jeep people say that these trapezoid-shaped wheel arches, that's a Jeep thing. But if I hadn't just regurgitated that to you, would you have picked up on it? That's kind of what I mean. Like nothing about the side of this car says the Jeeps that you know and love. It's new and it's different. And there's even this trim piece that goes all the way over across like this that looks a lot like what Lexus and Infinity and a few other brands are doing. And it's definitely not boxy as much as they've tried to extend the roofline with this big Civic Type R wing they've got going up here. This is the windshield is right here. This is the rear window. The actual window bit of this is right there. This is all for aerodynamics because boxy is not aerodynamic. And bad aerodynamics means bad range. And this is the first electric Jeep and it's got to have pretty good range. But then you come all the way around to the back and you really see what I'm talking about. I mean, first of all, yeah, this wing is huge. But even forgetting that for a second, the back of this vehicle could be anything from a Toyota RAV4 to a Porsche Macan to a Range Rover to probably three other SUVs too. And that's kind of my point is that just you don't really read it as a Jeep just looking at it. So to really answer our question of, is it a Jeep? We got to get inside and drive it. Now we know better than to judge a book by its cover, right? And indeed, when you crack this one open, it starts to look a lot more like a Jeep. This interior is actually quite reminiscent of a Grand Wagoneer and a Wagoneer. The shape of the dash, the four screens. They've had to move the vents a little bit and the steering wheels shaped a little different, but this feels a lot more familiar. So, okay, still a Jeep on the inside. And in fact, it's really comparable to another Jeep that I think everyone has accepted, the Grand Cherokee Trackhawk. Would anyone argue that that's not a real Jeep? I mean, let's compare here. This one has 600 horsepower and 617 pound feet of torque. That's not quite as much as the Trackhawk that had even more, but that's still really good. And in fact, Jeep says this one's a 10th of a second quicker to 60 anyway. It's standard all wheel drive, dual motors. It goes between 270 and 303 miles on a charge, which I mean, the Trackhawk drinks gas, so it doesn't go very far on either. It's low to the ground, it's fast and handles well. I mean, sounds pretty much like a Jeep that existed and that everyone thought was pretty cool. But there are a few things that don't quite match up as well. Truth be told, this launch edition that we're driving is the only one on sale right now, and it doesn't have any kind of off-road version, right? The Trackhawk was just one version of the Grand Cherokee. This one has open differentials, front and rear. It does not have knobby tires. It does not have a lot of ground clearance. It doesn't have a rock mode. You've just got sand and snow drive modes. So that's not very Jeep, but we can't say for sure that that's a reason to dislike it because this is only the first one. And Jeep is hinting very not subtly that there will be an off-roady one in the future. And in fact, we've already seen the concept they did last year where they put big tires on it and did a Trailhawk version. So we can't just ding it on that. Now, leaving aside all the is it or isn't it, is it a good car? And the answer is yes. You know, it's actually a very nice, quiet, pleasant EV. It's very quick. It's very comfortable to be in. It's got a big back seat. It's got still a decent amount of cargo space. It's got good range. It drives nicely, like most EVs. It's got a really low center of gravity, so it actually handles really well. Again, a bit Trackhawk-like. There's a lot to like about this, but there are a few things that aren't perfect. I don't know what happened when they were designing these push-button door handles. Outside, fine. Inside, the way you have to reach to get your thumb is basically like this to get to this button to open the door. I don't understand how that happened. And like the somewhat related Dodge Charger EV that just came out a couple months ago, this one feels like they just need a little bit more tuning. We've noticed there's a bit of a glitch in the instrument cluster when you're using it in navigation mode. Gets all kind of fuzzy sometimes when it has bad GPS and cell reception. That's not great. The front axle has a disconnect system for efficiency. It unlocks when you don't need it, and then it locks back up. And well, if you jump on the throttle a little too hard, sometimes it'll re-engage with a clunk that you'll feel, and there'll be a little hesitation between when you put your foot down and when it locks up and when you get the power from that front motor. And again, that's something that could pretty easily be fixed with a bit more software tuning, but they wanted to get it out and onto the market. Same for the sensitivity of the pedals. Even if you came from another EV, these, the accelerator pedal and the brake pedal, are really sensitive in this car. So you gotta really give them a light touch, or it's way easy to throw yourself or your passenger's head back just trying to accelerate a little bit, or again, trying to brake, especially at low speeds. It gets real touchy. And again, something that can be tuned out with software, but wasn't totally finished, we don't think. The thing you really gotta understand about this Jeep is that it's for the kind of customer who would be buying a Wagoneer in the first place, right? It's the premium Jeep. It's the street Jeep. It's the luxury Jeep, right? Like, no one's really going rock crawling in their Wagoneer with that long wheelbase and all that. That's not happening. So this isn't trying to be a Wrangler. And how does it succeed at being the luxury one? Well, it's pretty spacious. It's pretty comfortable. It's pretty quiet. We're doing good so far. It does have a little trouble with the ride quality. Most of the time, it's really good. But sometimes it gets a little shook up. It, you know, you take one big bump or one or two bumps, handles them really well. You get a really like nasty section of road and it's really bumping. You start to get this sort of like corpusing effect that you get in pickup trucks with really long wheelbases and it's inelegant. So not perfect there. For the fanciest of all fancy models that this launch edition is, we have just standard passive dampers. There's no air suspension. There's no active dampers. There's nothing special going on there. So Jeep does say that that is somewhat intentional. It leaves them room to grow in the future. They could add all those sorts of things, raise the height up for off-roading. They could make it more, even more luxurious, but this is the one they're leading with. And it's a pretty darn good start, honestly. So where does that leave us on the question of, is it a real Jeep? Is it a good Jeep? Does it deserve to be a Jeep? And we're off to a good start is the answer, but there's still some questions waiting to be answered. What's the off-roading one gonna be like? What's the lower trim levels, the ones that most people are gonna buy? Because this is the launch edition. This is the most expensive, fanciest one. And it's 72 grand to start. And honestly, that's right there with the Lexus RZ and the Cadillac Lyric and the Acura ZDX. A lot of these cars, it's priced right. It's actually, they're bigger than some of them. It's got comparable range. All those bits are right, but those vehicles aren't Jeeps and they don't need to do what Jeeps do. So what we have here is a good EV and what seems to be a pretty good Jeep, but we don't know the full story yet. 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