Jeep Wrangler 4xe Rental Experience - from an R1T owner

[Riviot]

However, maybe if I would've leased a better PHEV like a RAV4 Prime, I would be a believer since it offers better battery range & ICE/combined power.

Unfortunately my wife is headed down the Rav4 Prime road, and I have very few arguments against it. It really does work for a lot of people at a good price point. Even my offer to subsidize the R1S payments get a fat Negative.

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[RWerksman]

My wife had a 4xe for a little less than a year. We've owned 4 different Jeeps, and unfortunately it was my least favorite by far.

• The short, 28 mile range was almost always depleted throughout the day. That range also shrunk in winter to under 20 miles some days.
• The turbo four was louder and less refined than the tried-and-true Pentastar 6. The meager increase in MPGs wasn't offset by the harshness and recommendation for premium fuel.
• The blended braking was tremendously annoying. That release at low speeds was really jarring at times, especially when coming from a vehicle that does it better.
• The extra torque was nice, I guess, but very clearly not needed. It wasn't fast, and even if it was, it still handled terribly when compared with nearly anything else.
• It was tremendously expensive comparatively. Without the federal tax credit, it made zero sense.

At the end of the day, when I was provided the choice between driving it or my TJ, the TJ won every single time for everyone in the family... except the Great Dane.

 

[virgnia_rivian]

This 100% and I think you hit on everything that we found annoying. I forgot to mention how loud it gets when the gas engine kicks in.

I actually don’t mind a Wrangler and love driving them when I’m down in the caribbean putting around on island time, but for this use case it wasn’t great.

I’m also fully supportive of PEHV, but 28mi range isn’t enough. And the gas engine can’t charge the battery. The regen through the mountains helped a bit, but you’re getting a couple of miles of range at best.

Regarding costs, when we looked at it, seriously, dealers in our area were putting a 15-20k markup on Rubicon 4xe vehicles and that’s just not worth it.

My wife had a 4xe for a little less than a year. We've owned 4 different Jeeps, and unfortunately it was my least favorite by far.

• The short, 28 mile range was almost always depleted throughout the day. That range also shrunk in winter to under 20 miles some days.
• The turbo four was louder and less refined than the tried-and-true Pentastar 6. The meager increase in MPGs wasn't offset by the harshness and recommendation for premium fuel.
• The blended braking was tremendously annoying. That release at low speeds was really jarring at times, especially when coming from a vehicle that does it better.
• The extra torque was nice, I guess, but very clearly not needed. It wasn't fast, and even if it was, it still handled terribly when compared with nearly anything else.
• It was tremendously expensive comparatively. Without the federal tax credit, it made zero sense.

At the end of the day, when I was provided the choice between driving it or my TJ, the TJ won every single time for everyone in the family... except the Great Dane.

 

[brancky3]

• The turbo four was louder and less refined than the tried-and-true Pentastar 6. The meager increase in MPGs wasn't offset by the harshness and recommendation for premium fuel.

Yikes. Having owned a v6 Gladiator in the past, the Pentastar v6 is neither quiet nor refined. I can't imagine how miserable the turbo 4 is.

 

[RWerksman]

Yikes. Having owned a v6 Gladiator in the past, the Pentastar v6 is neither quiet nor refined. I can't imagine how miserable the turbo 4 is.

It actually pained me to write that.

I mean, the Pentastar is fine, I guess. To me, it was essentially a more recent 3800 Series V6. Comparatively though, I preferred it. I had both a Gladiator and a Wrangler with that engine and the harshness and noise fell below the floor that existed due to other elements of the vehicle. Not so much on the turbo 4.

Honestly, it sort of soured me on all the new Wranglers.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Test drove one while waiting for my R1T. Electric only power is totally inadequate for someone like me with a heavy foot. Passed.

 

[Cycliste]

And how was the medieval castle winery tour?

 

[DoubleTake]

My wife and I also own a 2024 Jeep 4Xe. It’s should never be compared to a full EV vehicle and is quite ignorant to do so. The vehicle primary source of fuel is gasoline and the battery is really only meant to be used as an assist and for local commutes. We have about 2k miles on it and 1500 miles has been all electric. The transition from electric to gas and back is very smooth for the type of vehicle it is. It has a full gas mode, a full electric mode and a a general hybrid mode.

Also, the 4Xe has much more power than the gasoline only version so for those who want the extra speed and torque, the hybrid offers it. At the end of the day it’s a jeep which historically is bad for fuel efficiency and no one buys it for that reason. While on the topic of efficiency, the R1T is horrible. My previous iX would easily get 3.3kwh avg highway and 2.8 stop and go.

I honestly find myself driving her jeep more than my R1T. It’s such a bad ass capable vehicle. Our Jeep has full fox suspension and is on 17” rims with 35in tires

 

[DoubleTake]

I laughed when I read this. I have fixed two shitty pentacrap v6 in the last two years alone for faulty rockers. That engine is trash and has seen so many revisions to keep it alive and is now finally being phased out.

the 4cyl is no power house or gas saver but it is a better built engine. As for sound, they sound the same if not the 4cyl is actually quieter at lower rpm’s. I have also owned a 3.6 JL and JT to compare it too

Yikes. Having owned a v6 Gladiator in the past, the Pentastar v6 is neither quiet nor refined. I can't imagine how miserable the turbo 4 is.

 

[voxel]

The 4xe sounds like it has an EPA efficiency of around 1.8 mi/kWh. I have looked into some PHEVs recently and some of them are as low as 1.4 mi/kwh (mid size suv). The rav4 prime is supposed to achieve just under 2.0 mi/kwh and even the Prius Prime only gets 3 mi/kWh in ideal conditions. Other than the cost, this is the biggest issue I see with these “parallel” PHEVs. Their electric efficiency is just poor. Meanwhile our R1T gets over 2.4 lifetime in real world driving. The “series PHEVs” aka range extended EVs do much better in range and efficiency and make a lot more sense (i3 or the OG Volt). I’m just not sure why there isn’t a bigger market for them.

No. The R4P gets 3.0 mi/kWh and maybe 3.2mi/kWh if you stay at slow city speeds. I regularly exceeded 42 miles with that 14.5-ish kWh battery.

I borrowed a friend's 4xe for a week and loved it for what it was. PHEVs work best as a sole car and if you commute under the 28-30 miles.

My R1S is hovering around 2.1 mi/kWh efficiency. Pretty poor but that's not the real issue. The slow 1C-rate DC charging rate is abysmal. Rivian, please give me 2C at 40% - heck I would settled for 1.5C at 50%

 

[Marchin_MTB]

No. The R4P gets 3.0 mi/kWh and maybe 3.2mi/kWh if you stay at slow city speeds. I regularly exceeded 42 miles with that 14.5-ish kWh battery.

I borrowed a friend's 4xe for a week and loved it for what it was. PHEVs work best as a sole car and if you commute under the 28-30 miles.

My R1S is hovering around 2.1 mi/kWh efficiency. Pretty poor but that's not the real issue. The slow 1C-rate DC charging rate is abysmal. Rivian, please give me 2C at 40% - heck I would settled for 1.5C at 50%

3.0 mi/kwh is encouraging. Is that a mix of highway and non-highway?

 

[RWerksman]

I laughed when I read this. I have fixed two shitty pentacrap v6 in the last two years alone for faulty rockers. That engine is trash and has seen so many revisions to keep it alive and is now finally being phased out.

It does get it's fair share of hate, and I loath defending it, but at the end of the day there are over 10 million of them out there. You can have a boat load of failures and still be quite reliable on average.

 

[s4wrxttcs]

In my use the 4xE would have been pretty nice.

My commute to work is only about 9-10 miles each way, and that's largely how I enjoyed driving my Wrangler. I preferred the low speed handling/feeling of my Wrangler over the speed handling of my R1T. For everything else I drove my EV (either the previous Model 3 or the R1T).

I didn't end up getting the 4xE because of reliability concerns so I bought an even less reliable vehicle when I traded my Model 3 for a Rivian R1T. Haha

I recently sold my Wrangler because I bought a second house, and didn't see the need for a Jeep and an R1T. The R1T is indispensable when you need to do long highway drives to get stuff from own house to another. The Jeep was more of a "I really enjoy this even if its not really practical" kind of vehicle.

What I'd love to have is a Hybrid Camper Van. Where it was setup so the diesel (or gas) engine was just a generator. That way it would only have one high voltage battery shared by the chassis and house, and one gas tank for the generator and gas peripherals (mostly heating). That would be my kind of PHEV.

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

Apples to oranges. Hybrids are only meant to make ICE a little more efficient (and help lower a legacy auto's fleet-wide MPG targets). None can be as efficient as a true EV. That is to be expected. The Jeep's suspension is also unsophisticated, based on tech that is serval decades old. Really the only advantage with the Jeep is that you could carry gasoline in jerry cans for long overland excursions.

 

[shumdit]

As a Rivian and GC 4Xe owner I can chime in here. I’m team Rivian but the wife still has range anxiety even though I’ve been an EV driver for over 10 years and we’ve never run out of juice. For her the 4xe makes sense because she drives 9.6 miles each way daily so she can run all electric with the 4xe everyday. Should she need to go further for some reason she can fall back on the ICE. In 7 months of ownership and 6000 miles we are on tank #2 of fuel.
i don’t like hybrids since you have the maintenance and complexity of a conventional ICE and lose the additional storage an EV offers. But it’s her car.
Also, the sticker on hers was right at $80,000 so more than my pre-price hike Rivian. That being said, they threw a lot of incentives at us and the effective payment of $503 a month is pretty reasonable on a 36K/12k miles per year lease.

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