- We spent 18 months and roughly 24,000 miles with a 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe.
- In that time, the Jeep left us stranded on three occasions, and its powertrain was the subject of constant complaints.
- OK, it wasn't all bad. But we still wouldn't buy ours again.
Back in February 2023, we paid $64,150 to add a shiny new Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe plug-in hybrid to our long-term fleet. Over the next 18 months, we put about 24,000 miles on the Jeep, and in that time, it struggled to regularly achieve its EV-only range claims, annoyed us with its powertrain and ride quality, made some staff members carsick and left us stranded not once, not twice, but thrice. Last month, we had the Jeep appraised, and learned it was only worth $33,000, a depreciation of 48.5% in less than two years. Suffice it to say, if we had to do it all over again, well, we wouldn't.
What we liked
Life with our long-term Grand Cherokee wasn't all bad. Right off the bat, we found its interior to be a massive improvement over the old Grand Cherokee, and learned that its squared-off shape was a boon for hauling lots and lots of cargo.
We paid $1,995 to add a rear-seat entertainment package to our Grand Cherokee, giving us two screens and the ability to stream content from Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime, or mirror our phones. The parents on our staff loved this functionality; it worked well and their kids had no trouble using the technology on long drives.
We got the 4xe model because we wanted to spend extended time with Jeep's plug-in hybrid powertrain, and those of us with the ability to charge at home could frequently make use of the Grand Cherokee's electric range.
"I had our long-term Grand Cherokee for about three weeks straight, and in that time, I was able to frequently charge it up at home and take advantage of its plug-in powertrain," wrote director of written content, Brent Romans, who has a 240-volt NEMA 14-50 outlet in his garage. "A lot of my daily driving is related to taking my kids to school or running errands. I found that I could do all of that and still have some range left over. Once I got home, I'd plug in. Easy peasy."
Also, holy smokes, the Grand Cherokee was quick. When we put on our test track, we found our 4xe to be a full second quicker in the 0-60 mph sprint than the last V8-powered version we tested.
What we didn't
Unfortunately, pretty much every one of the Grand Cherokee's good things came with a caveat. We liked the interior ... but thought there was way too much hard plastic and fake wood considering our tester's nearly $65,000 price tag.
"The Grand Cherokee's cabin photographs well, but once you start poking around, it all feels so cheap," wrote news manager Cameron Rogers. "There's hard textured plastic everywhere (some of these panels flex and move with the slightest provocation), the piano black trim feels like it was ripped out of a decade-old Mitsubishi, and even the leatherette and leather feel downmarket. The worst offender is the fake wood trim, which doesn't quite sink to the lows of our old long-term Yugo, but it's not far off." Yikes.
Going back to the powertrain, again, we liked driving the Jeep in its fully electric mode ... but when the gas engine kicked on, boy was it noticeable. And considering how often the Jeep liked to switch between its electric and gas-assisted propulsion methods when driven in its default Hybrid mode, this made for an incredibly harsh experience. Driving the Jeep in the city was always rough and herky-jerky, with the SUV lurching forward and backward in stop-and-go driing due to the pronounced engine start-up/shut-down transitions.
Senior production manager Amy Silliman recounts a particularly unpleasant experience: "I took the Grand Cherokee on a trip to Las Vegas and it surprised me. On the drive out to Vegas, everyone in the car got motion sickness. About two hours into the drive, we had to stop as one of my friends had to throw up from the motion of the car." Yikes again.
We could maybe overlook this wonkiness if we were at least getting respectable efficiency. But in our testing, we were only occasionally able to hit the EPA-estimated 26 miles of EV range, though our lifetime average of 23.1 mpg matches the EPA's 23-mpg combined rating. Still, when you consider that a V6-powered Grand Cherokee 4WD is rated to get 22 mpg combined, we'd be willing to sacrifice that extra 1 mpg for a smoother overall experience.
Other parts of the Grand Cherokee's on-road experience weren't so great, either. We found the steering to be unnecessarily heavy, especially without any real handling benefits. It also had a super-stiff ride, and that's despite being fitted with the Grand Cherokee's smaller 18-inch wheels and cushy 265/60-series all-season tires.
Three tow trucks in one year
No long-term car in recent memory flat-out refused to work as often as our Grand Cherokee. And yes, that includes our Fisker Ocean.
The first big incident happened to senior news editor Nick Yekikian (on Christmas Eve of all days). "I parked the Jeep outside my apartment on December 23. On the 24th, it wouldn't start. There was no power to anything. The doors wouldn't unlock, the displays wouldn't turn on. It was dead."
Nick called for a tow truck. "The Jeep was locked in gear (because there's an electronic shift mechanism) so I had to find the manual neutral override (underneath a panel on the left side of the driver's footwell). Once it was on the flatbed, the dash kept flashing on and off, warning lights kept coming on and seat defaulted to sliding all the way back."
The problem ended up being defective cells in the 12-volt battery, which was replaced under warranty. But it wasn't long before the Grand Cherokee found itself on a flatbed tow truck again.
For its second act, the Jeep died in the middle of nowhere, on the side of the runway where we film our U-Drags videos. Director of vehicle operations Mike Schmidt talks about the whole experience in-depth in this article, where the Jeep went into limp mode, accompanied by a slew of warning lights on the dash. This time around, a pin had become disconnected from the back of the electronic control unit, along with some damaged wiring. That service — along with two recalls — were performed under warranty, some 300 miles from Edmunds HQ.
We figured (and hoped) that'd be the end of it. But no.
Editor Jake Sundstrom was the lucky recipient of breakdown No. 3, and while his situation was similar to Schmidt's, we learned the problems were actually different. A Jeep representative told us, "In the first case, the technician found both a terminal pushed out from a body harness connector and a damaged wire on the same circuit. Both were repaired. In the second scenario, the technician found a damaged PAM (parking assist module) connector lock. With the integrity of the lock compromised, the connector became loose."
Both issues caused open circuits that sent driver warnings for the multiple systems affected and put the car into limp mode as a precaution. But once again, the repairs were completed under warranty, and we also got a tire rotation, oil change, new suspension pinch bolt (due to a recall), new connector lock for the PAM and a new 12-volt battery (yes, another one). Shoutout to the Jeep Wave program for making this final repair process very smooth.
The Jeep's unreliability really soured its reputation in our fleet; by the end, no one wanted to take the Grand Cherokee for more than a quick errand for fear of something going terribly wrong.
"The unreliability of our Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe differs from the unreliability I'm accustomed to," wrote senior vehicle test editor Kurt Niebuhr. "I own and have owned less-than-new vehicles my whole life. As long as it's not a genuine safety concern, I have no problem driving a car with stuff that's not working. But when our JGC 4xe has been unreliable, it's been a catastrophic ain't-gonna-move-under-its-own-power breakdown. Electrical or otherwise, if it's got a better-than-average chance of winding up on a flatbed, count me out. I'm too old for that stuff, especially if I'm planning on a road trip."
The final verdict
When we finish the long-term test of a vehicle we've purchased, we take it in for appraisal. Depreciation rates are not equal across vehicles; some lose their value much quicker than others. Our Jeep? We bought it for $64,150. Now it's worth $33,000. That means it lost almost half its value in 18 months. This is ... not great.
It's entirely possible that we just got a bad one. But if you scan our consumer reviews of the 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe, you'll notice a lot of poor scores that cite issues similar to the ones we had. All we know is, the few pros of our Grand Cherokee were far outweighed by its many cons. If we could rewind to February 2023, we'd definitely buy something else.
from Edmunds.com Car News https://ift.tt/6H1MrIN
