The 2021 Jeep Wrangler 4xe is a plug-in hybrid Wrangler available in Sahara, Rubicon and High Altitude variants. It packs 375 horsepower and V8-matching 470 pound-feet of torque. Jeep managed to make the plug-in attractive to hybrid and off-roading fans alike by offering 22 miles of electric range, one-pedal driving and all of the off-pavement capability that has made the Wrangler an icon to 4x4 enthusiasts. All of this comes at a sticker price significantly lower than that of the V8-powered Rubicon 392, making it a far more attractive option to mainstream buyers. Byron walks you through the interior features associated with the new powertrain and shows how Jeep integrated them into the existing controls.
Transcript- Hey, everybody. It's Byron. You're here with me in the 2021 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 4 by E. The 4 by E is on actually exclusive to the Rubicon, but it's what we happen to have in front of us right now. And I just want to walk you through a few of the things that Jeep did to make a regular Wrangler into a plug-in.
And that includes some upgrades to the interior that allow you to actually take advantage of the different features offered by this fancy new powertrain. So this is Jeep's first shot at a plug-in hybrid for the US market. And the Wrangler seems like kind of an unusual choice, but if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.
This is an application where you want a ton of torque for off-roading. You want it on-demand, meaning you want it instantly, not eventually, as many V6 Wrangler owners have learned over the years. And, frankly, it's just a good way to bring plug-in hybrids to Jeep. Because if there is a flagship within the Jeep lineup, it's the Wrangler.
It doesn't matter how expensive the Grand Wagoneer is, the Jeep Wrangler is the car you think of when you think of Jeep. So it makes a ton of sense for this to be the car that they lead with. So now one of the things is when you have a Jeep Wrangler and you're going to make it a hybrid, it's really important that it be a Wrangler first and a hybrid second.
That makes a lot of sense in this context. You have this Jeep that they've actually been building for several years already, and they introduced this new 4 by E powertrain later in its model cycle. They started this model in 2018, it's now 2021. And everything else in this car is already pretty well-established.
The downside of that is that includes all of the interface-- all of the buttons, the touch screen, all of the stuff is already pretty well-established. When you have a plug-in hybrid power train, you're going to want to make modifications to that. And in a very Jeep fashion, they haven't really done that in a fancy way.
They've gone for practical. They've gone for use what's in front of you. They've replaced some buttons that do other things on different models. The Max Regen button in this is where the performance exhaust button is in the Rubicon 392, for example. And some of the other stuff just kind of feels a bit tacked on, a bit like an afterthought. But it all works, and I'm just going to give you a quick overview of what they've updated, what they've changed, and how it all works.
So to kick off here, I'm going to go ahead and start with what they did best, and that's the infotainment system. As you can see, they've added this new e-hybrid button here. You click that, and it brings up the hybrid pane. Now, here you can see all the things you can typically see with a hybrid vehicle.
As we're not moving right now, you can see there's no engine, battery, or climate draw on the system because all of it is off. We're sitting here in accessory mode, so there's no need for any of this stuff. I'll go ahead and fire it up, and now we're running.
So now you can see that we've got 9 kilowatts for the battery, 2 kilowatts of draw from the climate control system. The engine is currently not doing anything at all. We have these buttons over here on the side-- driving history showing how much of it was battery, how much of it was power train-- charging schedule, which I haven't used because I actually have not plugged this in yet.
And then here's the e-save panel. This gives you two options. As you can see, you have battery save and battery charge. Batteries save is exactly what it sounds like-- as you're driving along, if you have this mode enabled, it will keep the battery charged at the level it was when you started your journey or when you turned this option on, whichever applies.
Battery charge mode means that it will try to charge the battery all the way to 100% while you're driving. And this means it's going to use excess power or, in some cases, any power that it can actually get to juice the battery instead of actually propelling the car. This might happen when it's idling. This might happen as you're cruising along.
But the end result is supposed to be that you get to a full battery charge, at which point it will hold that charge so that when you reach a place where you want to use only battery power, you can. And for that, we're going to move to another set of buttons.
Over here on the driver's side of the steering column just below the headlight switch and the instrument panel dimmer, we have our primary controls for the hybrid system. Now, right now you can see we have e-save mode enabled. And as you saw in the infotainment screen earlier, we had it set to charge.
So this toggle here simply turns e-save on or off. It doesn't let you choose between preserving or charging the battery. It simply lets you opt in or out of whatever e-save profile you set in the infotainment system. You see we have two other options here-- hybrid and electric, and they're exactly what they sound like.
Hybrid mode is essentially default. That's what lets the car just operate the way it should, given conditions. It will charge the battery through braking regen. It will charge the battery through deceleration regen. It will do all of those things that the car normally does automatically. And it will use the gasoline part of the powertrain as needed.
The electric mode-- also exactly what it sounds like. In that mode, the car will try to operate exclusively on EV power. This is for areas where, perhaps, you're not allowed to use the gasoline engine. Or if you're just trying to exclusively use electricity rather than using gas, maybe it's for your commute and you have a short one, and you just don't want the gasoline engine to kick in, you can put it in electric mode, and until the battery state of charge is completely depleted, it will stay in electric operation.
And as you can see, it's a simple matter of toggling the mode you want. And you probably heard it ding at me, and that's because the state of charge is not sufficient to support all-electric operation at the moment. As you can see, it defaulted back to e-save. But if I hit hybrid, hybrid works all the time so we're good to go.
All right, and there's just one more control we want to touch on here, and that's this little fella. This button enables Max Regen mode. This is the one that allows you to do the one-pedal driving, which is a great gimmick, and a lot of fun off-road surprisingly. And they placed it so that it's easily accessible here alongside your traction control and your select speed, which is their, like, off-road cruise control system.
Your differential locking and everything is right down here beneath it along with your electronic swaybar disconnect. So all of these little things that you might want to reach out and just quickly access while you're cruising along, they put one-pedal driving right there with it.
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