“Shhhhh… I’m trying to hear my tires!” I say to my passenger, who stops his nervous chatting and glances sideways at me like I have two heads.
“What?”
“Listen!” I say and gesture out the window. “In electric mode, I can hear if my tires are hooking up on the line I want.”
Again, concerned stare, then realization of what I’m saying sinks in, and he cocks his head to listen. We are in my Jeep Wrangler 4xe Rubicon plug-in hybrid crawling up a famous off-road obstacle near Moab, Utah, called Wipe Out Hill. It’s an obstacle that is intimidating by any standards. I notice that he has stopped talking and is holding his breath.
Nineteen Hybrid Wranglers And Counting
To date, I have owned a total of nineteen hybrid Jeep Wrangler 4xe Rubicons. The opportunity to own and operate so many is because I am in the Jeep rental, 4WD training and guiding business. At Barlow Adventures Jeep Rentals in Sedona, Arizona, four-wheel drive is my work. We typically keep a Jeep in rental rotation for two to three years, then trade it in on a new model. This has given me the unique opportunity to try out every drivetrain Jeep has devised for the Wrangler.
The red 4xe and silver diesel Rubicons are both rentals in our Sedona fleet. Here they were seen playing together in their natural habitat. The diesel Wrangler is a great rockcrawler, idling smoothly along the trail. But the smell, loudness, cost of maintenance, and dismal off-the-line speed explain why they were only made for a couple years.
First Year Of The Electrified Wrangler Was 2018, The eTorque
Most people don’t realize that the first year of the electrified Wrangler was 2018. Jeep offered a “mild hybrid” model, the eTorque, which boasted a whopping 3 kWh of battery boost (yeah, I know, but I could feel it). I owned thirteen of those while they were in production between 2018 and 2019. The more recent and more well known hybrid is the 4xe plug-in hybrid (PHEV) model, released in spring of 2021. I have owned six of those so far, and “fostered” two more. “Fostering” refers to the ones Jeep provided me with which to compete in the Rebelle Rally. More on that in an upcoming story.
This is a photo of our Jeep rental store in Sedona, with two Jeep Wrangler 4xe Rubicons out front. They get no different treatment than our other rentals but are the most requested.
Jeep Wrangler 4xe Rubicon: Embracing New Technology
The Barlow Adventures Jeep Rentals fleet consists of a mix of hybrids and gassers. Since I only commit to a vehicle for a couple years, I’m willing to jump in and try out the new stuff. I have said in the past that electrified infrastructure won’t truly take off until my generation dies off. I’m one of the dinosaurs whose heart races at the sound of a big gas-guzzling V8. But I recognize that our revered old gassers are no longer the path of the future, so I figure I need to embrace the new technology sooner rather than later. As rentals, for obvious reasons, we are likely to find any weak spots far sooner than most private owners.
The First Weak Spot: Price
And there are weak spots. First and foremost is the upfront purchase price. It has run an average of $6,000 more for a hybrid in our fleet than the standard 2.0-liter and 3.6-liter gassers. Though this can be offset by the $7,500 tax credit, it’s still a bottom line we must face upfront.
Here’s one of our Jeep Wrangler 4xe Rubicons on the legendary Rubicon Trail. These are the size of rocks where an experienced driver might notice the less than perfectly smooth throttle application. I know that electric motor clutches and braking don’t like slippage, but I have no doubt that Jeep engineers will figure out a way to make this as smooth or smoother than other drivetrains in the future. The Jeep in the photo is named “Sedona.” She was my personal guide vehicle for a year and a half. I blew up her 2.0-liter gas motor once (dunes, what can I say?), but no 4xe-specific issues.
Not As Smooth In The Big Rocks
Second, the hybrid Jeep Wrangler 4xe Rubicons are not as smooth in the big rocks as the other drivetrains we have had. That’s not to say that we won’t take them on trails like, say, the famous and challenging Rubicon Trail (we do), but it’s not going to be the smoothest choice, especially for a novice driver. Although a very small percentage of drivers will ever find themselves in the size of boulders I’m talking about, the 4xe gets a little lurchy when you are trying to finesse the throttle over boulders taller than the wheels.
4xe Idiosyncrasies
Some techniques to mitigate that, like left-foot braking, don’t really work well with the clutches in an electric drive system. In fact, the brakes seem to stick, then suddenly let go. And there is no hill-hold programming, like the gassers have. When you let off the brake and the gas, the hybrid Jeep Wrangler 4xe Rubicons tend to roll back when in 4-Low, while the gassers will hold for a couple seconds. By contrast, in a fully electric drivetrain prototype that I have been lucky enough to drive, you can achieve super smooth constant torque or hill-hold by just feathering the throttle, no brake needed. So, progress is coming, but the smoothness in super slow rockcrawling situations in the 4xe isn’t “there” yet.
Public Perception Is A Hurdle
Third, and more broadly, the public perception of electrified vehicles is the biggest hurdle to faster development. This is the biggest issue with my generation of “old school” jeepers. We all think there is no charging to get us across the country, that the batteries will die and leave us stranded without any warning, and that we are in constant imminent danger of spontaneous combustion. What I have learned is that charging is growing at an exponential rate. Recently, a friend drove her Rivian from Maryland to California for a visit, and before she started home, she was looking at her charging app and said “Wow, there are thirteen more charging stations between me and home since I started!”
Wipe Out Hill always gathers a crowd of spectators. This was a stock 4xe Rubicon taking the right line (left line described in story) during the famous Easter Jeep Safari.
Dispelling the Myths
Basically, if you run out of battery, it’s due to your own poor planning, just like running out of gas. And there are now portable charging options for roadside assistance. Example: In select markets, AAA can deliver “charging” to you, just like a 5-gallon can of gas. And even though a lithium fire is serious to put out, the chance of catching on fire in the first place is still very low. The DIY offroad lights on your analog CJ are still a much higher fire starting hazard. And I have found that the biggest nay-sayers are the ones who haven’t driven one.
Plenty Of Power, Quiet, And Super-Efficient
And we have many people driving our Jeep Wrangler 4xe Rubicons and loving them. Our rental customers are either just drivers who ended up with a 4xe as a function of normal rental rotation, OR they have requested a 4xe because they are curious. The hybrid really shines around town and on easy to moderate 4WD trails. They have plenty of power, they’re quiet, and super-efficient. The PHEV Wranglers can do a day of exploring and wheeling and use less than a half tank of gas around Sedona. We were afraid that people would be overwhelmed by how many buttons the 4xe has. But there are two types: Those who love all the buttons, and those for whom we distill it down for them, that the ONLY thing they MUST do is shift into 4-Low.
I have had the honor of driving Jeep’s Magneto concept for photo shoots at all of her Easter Jeep Safari appearances. As a prototype, she had some oddities, but her powerful all-electric drivetrain was so smooth in even the biggest rocks.
Power and Efficiency
Personally, I like the power. No, I love the power. In all honesty, when I am in town at stop lights, I secretly hope a Mustang or a cherry-bomb Honda pulls up next to me so I can launch at the green light and embarrass them. Slightly less juvenile is the exhilaration of having more than enough power to crest the top of Oldsmobile Hill in Glamis, where my sweet, but less than exhilarating, 3.6-liter-powered Gladiator has never made it. I can drive mine to work in electric, recharge it, and drive home, using about $1.80 in electricity versus $10 in gas (as long as I’m not mashing the throttle). And I podiumed three out of three times that I competed with one in the Rebelle Rally (that’s another story that I’ll tell soon).
Quiet When Off-Road
But my favorite thing of all about the Jeep Wrangler 4xe Rubicons is the quiet when you are four-wheeling. Not only being able to ease up and view wildlife, or hear oncoming traffic, but being able to hear if my tires are hooking up on the line I want on nasty obstacles. So, back to where I started this story–hanging on and holding our breath on Wipe Out Hill. I needed my left front tire to grip a three-foot high ledge on my left and make it at least halfway up, and then I needed my right rear tire to grip the two-foot ledge in just the right spot. I’m feathering the “gas” pedal, maintaining a steady speed of about 1/2 half mph. If either tire slipped at all, I knew from experience that it would mean backing down and realigning to get it just right.
Our very first Wrangler 4xe, “Elektra,” is our cover Jeep. She retired from rental service with honors, having been reliable, highly requested, and gorgeous her whole career. The only one who had any weird downtime was her sister, “Dyna,” who was one of the early 4xe’s who needed the transmission reflash early on. Otherwise, all of our 4xes have been solid workhorses.
The Key Was To Stop A Spinning Tire Quickly
But also from experience, I knew that spinning a tire for just a second could slide me over to a line that made it difficult and even dangerous to back down. So, the key was to stop a spinning tire as quickly as possible. I could see the front left doing its job, then listened as my right rear made contact and…GRIPTION! No sound of slipping. As I felt the rear of the Jeep ease up the obstacle, I let out a “whoop!” and glanced at my pale passenger. He grinned and let out an audible breath of relief. Wipe Out Hill would claim no victims today, thanks in part to the electric drive of the 4xe.
