2024 Jeep Wagoneer S First Drive: Jeep Goes EV, But Is It a Real Jeep?

MotorTrend

Jeep has launched its first EV in America

Transcript

00:00Hey real quick, what vehicle am I reviewing? Can you tell? Would you have

00:05guessed it's the new Jeep Wagoneer S, the first all-electric Jeep for America? But

00:10is it a real Jeep? Let's get into that. Now this is actually an easy question to

00:16answer because empirically, yes it is a Jeep. It's built by Jeep. It's not a

00:20rebadged from some other brand owned by the same company. It is definitely a Jeep

00:25in that regard. But you wouldn't necessarily know it just looking at it,

00:28right? Because if you do cover up that seven-slot grille, which isn't actually

00:33even really a grille on this one, it could kind of look like a lot of

00:36different cars. It's long and sleek and sporty, a Range Rover maybe even, but

00:42definitely not like a Wrangler or a big boxy Grand Wagoneer. If you go around to

00:46the side of it, you see like the Jeep people say that these trapezoid shaped

00:51wheel arches, that's a Jeep thing. But if I hadn't just regurgitated that to you,

00:55would you have picked up on it? That's kind of what I mean. Like nothing about the

01:00side of this car says the Jeeps that you know and love. It's new and it's

01:04different. And there's even this trim piece that goes all the way over

01:07across like this that looks a lot like what Lexus and Infiniti and a few other

01:12brands are doing. And it's definitely not boxy as much as they've tried to extend

01:17the roofline with this big Civic Type R wing they've got going up here. This is

01:21the windshield is right here. This is the rear window. The actual window

01:25bit of this is right there. This is all for aerodynamics because boxy is not

01:30aerodynamic. And bad aerodynamics means bad range. And this is the first electric

01:36Jeep and it's got to have pretty good range. But then you come all the way on

01:40the back and you really see what I'm talking about. I mean, first of all, yeah,

01:43this wing is huge. But even forgetting that for a second, the back of this

01:49vehicle could be anything from a Toyota RAV4 to a Porsche Macan to a Range Rover

01:56to probably three other SUVs too. And that's kind of my point is that just you

02:01don't really read it as a Jeep just looking at it. So to really answer our

02:04question of is it a Jeep, we got to get inside and drive it.

02:10Now, we know better than to judge a book by its cover, right? And indeed, when you

02:21crack this one open, it starts to look a lot more like a Jeep. This interior is

02:26actually quite reminiscent of a Grand Wagoneer and a Wagoneer. The shape of the

02:31dash, the four screens. They've had to move the vents a little bit and the

02:35steering wheels shaped a little different. But this feels a lot more

02:38familiar. So, OK, still a Jeep on the inside. And in fact, it's really

02:45comparable to another Jeep that I think everyone has accepted. The Grand

02:49Cherokee Trackhawk. Would anyone argue that that's not a real Jeep? I mean, let's

02:55let's compare here. This one has 600 horsepower and 617 pound feet of torque.

03:00That's not quite as much as the Trackhawk that had even more, but that's

03:04still really good. And in fact, Jeep says this one's a tenth of a second quicker

03:06than 60 anyway. It's standard all wheel drive, dual motors. It goes between 270

03:14and 303 miles on a charge, which I mean, the Trackhawk drinks gas, so it doesn't

03:18go very far either. It's low to the ground. It's fast and handles well. I

03:24mean, sounds pretty much like a Jeep that existed and that everyone thought was

03:30pretty cool. But there are a few things that don't quite match up as well.

03:44Truth be told, this launch edition that we're driving is the only one on sale

03:48right now, and it doesn't have any kind of off-road version, right? The

03:53Trackhawk was just one version of the Grand Cherokee. This one has open

03:57differentials front and rear. It does not have knobby tires. It does not have

04:01a lot of ground clearance. It doesn't have a rock mode. You just got sand and

04:04snow drive modes. So that's not very Jeep-y, but we can't say for sure that

04:10that's a reason to dislike it because this is only the first one, and Jeep is

04:15hinting very not subtly that there will be an off-roady one in the future. And in

04:22fact, we've already seen the concept they did last year where they put big

04:27tires on it and did a Trailhawk version. So we can't just ding it on that. Now,

04:35leaving aside all the is it or isn't it, is it a good car? And the answer is yes.

04:41You know, it's actually a very nice, quiet, pleasant EV. It's very quick. It's a

04:50very comfortable being. It's got a big back seat. It's got still a decent amount

04:55of cargo space. It's got good range. It drives nicely like most EVs. It's got a

05:01really low center of gravity, so it actually handles really well. Again, a bit

05:04Trackhawk-like. There's a lot to like about this, but there are a few things

05:08that aren't perfect. I don't know what happened when they were designing these

05:13push-button door handles. Outside, fine. Inside, the way you have to reach to get

05:19your thumb is basically like this to get to this button to open the door. I don't

05:25understand how that happened. And like the somewhat related Dodge Charger EV

05:33that just came out a couple months ago, this one feels like they just need a

05:37little bit more tuning. We've noticed there's a bit of a glitch in the

05:42instrument cluster when you're using it in navigation mode. It gets all kind of fuzzy

05:46sometimes when it has bad GPS and cell reception. That's not great. The front

05:53axle has a disconnect system for efficiency. It unlocks when you don't

05:56need it, and then it locks back up. And well, if you jump on the throttle a

06:00little too hard, sometimes it'll re-engage with a clunk that you'll feel.

06:05And there'll be a little hesitation between when you put your foot down and

06:07when it locks up and when you get the power from that front motor. And again,

06:11that's something that could pretty easily be fixed with a bit more software

06:15tuning, but they wanted to get it out and onto the market. Same for the

06:19sensitivity of the pedals. Even if you came from another EV, the

06:25accelerator pedal and the brake pedal are really sensitive in this car. So you

06:30got to really give them a light touch, or it's way easy to throw yourself or

06:35your passengers head back just trying to accelerate a little bit, or again trying

06:40to brake. Especially at low speeds, it gets real touchy. And again, something

06:44that can be tuned out with software, but wasn't totally finished, we don't think.

06:49The thing you really got to understand about this Jeep is that it's for the kind

06:56of customer who would be buying a Wagoneer in the first place, right? It's

07:00the premium Jeep. It's the street Jeep. It's the luxury Jeep, right? Like no one's

07:05really going rock crawling in their Wagoneer with that long wheelbase and

07:08all that. That's not happening. So this isn't trying to be a Wrangler. And how

07:14does it succeed at being the luxury one? Well, it's pretty spacious. It's pretty

07:20comfortable. It's pretty quiet. We're doing good so far. It does have a little

07:24trouble with the ride quality. Most of the time it's really good, but sometimes

07:31it gets a little shook up. It, you know, you take one big bump or one or two

07:37bumps, handles them really well. You get a really like nasty section of road and

07:40it's really bumping. You start to get this sort of like corpusing effect that

07:44you get in pickup trucks with really long wheelbases and it's inelegant. So

07:50not perfect there. And for the fanciest of all fancy models that this launch

07:55edition is, we have just standard passive dampers. There's no air suspension.

08:01There's no active dampers. There's nothing special going on there. So Jeep

08:06does say that that is somewhat intentional. It leaves them room to grow

08:10in the future. They could add all those sorts of things, raise the height up for

08:13off-roading. They could make it more, even more luxurious, but this is the one

08:19they're leading with. And it's a pretty darn good start, honestly.

08:26So what does that leave us on the question of is it a real Jeep? Is it a

08:30good Jeep? Does it deserve to be a Jeep? And we're off to a good start is the

08:35answer, but there's still some questions waiting to be answered. What's the

08:38off-roady one gonna be like? What's the lower trim levels, the ones that most

08:44people are gonna buy? Because this is the launch edition. This is the most

08:47expensive, fanciest one, and it's $72,000 to start. And you know, honestly, that's

08:52right there with, you know, the Lexus RZ and the Cadillac Lyric and the Acura ZDX.

08:57A lot of these cars, it's priced right. It's actually bigger than some of

09:02them. It's got comparable range. All those bits are right, but those vehicles aren't

09:08Jeeps, and they don't need to do what Jeeps do. So what we have here is a good

09:13EV and what seems to be a pretty good Jeep, but we don't know the full story

09:19yet. For all the fine details, read the whole story at MotorTrend.com.

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