- This is the Cars.com Best SUV for 2023,
the '23 Jeep Grand Cherokee,
which we at cars.com bought a long-term test version of,
in the Trailhawk 4xe model.
Now that means that it is the ultimate off-road version
of the Grand Cherokee in the Trailhawk,
and it's also a plug-in hybrid, that's the 4xe.
But it's also a family vehicle,
and not what most people think of
when they think of the ultimate off-road Jeep.
That is, that is a 2023 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon,
in 20th Anniversary trim, also a 4xe, also a plug-in hybrid.
So both of these Jeeps can motor silently
through the woods in electric mode,
which is really something we wanted to experience.
So we brought both of these here to Attica, Indiana,
and the Badlands Off-Road Park,
as part of the local Jeep Jamboree,
to put these two through their paces,
to actually see which one of them
is the better off-roader in hybrid electric mode.
But I can't do this by myself,
so I'm gonna need someone to help me.
Hey Damon, what are you doing?
- Oh, what?
Nothing.
- Wanna go wheeling?
- Okay.
- All right, let's go.
- All right.
(intense music)
- So we've actually driven both of the 4xes now,
pretty extensively, over the course of the last two days,
through the Badlands here in Attica, Indiana.
And in my mind, it really comes down to one thing:
you can have comfortable, or you can have capable.
I mean they're both capable, they're both comfortable.
But one focuses more on capability.
The other focuses more on comfort.
This one is the comfortable one.
This is our long-term Grand Cherokee, 4xe Trailhawk.
And Comfort really is the name of the game in this thing.
- Yes, we would not be near as comfortable,
were we sitting in the Wrangler Rubicon right now.
No, we would be shoulder to shoulder.
- Yeah.
- My knees would be jammed against the center console,
and outside.
Yeah, the space of the Grand Cherokee is a key asset.
- And the one thing that we did find
made a huge difference on the trail, was cooled seats.
(laughing)
- Yes, God yes.
- It's got ventilated seats in this thing.
- Which you got for the afternoon,
And I got for the morning when it was not as hot.
- Well, you know, we traded.
I gave you the opportunity.
- Yes.
- But yeah, I mean the Wrangler's advantage
is that it is extremely capable,
especially in things like approach angle.
You don't have much front overhang at all,
so it's really easy to get to an obstacle,
to go up an obstacle.
No problem.
This thing surprised everybody,
in terms of how well it did, however.
The Grand Cherokee, it's capability is astonishing,
especially since you've got this electronic air suspension,
that raises the thing,
so that it actually has more ground clearance
than a standard Rubicon.
- Yeah
It was, so I drove this the better part of three hours,
coming down from Chicago, to the off-road park here.
And on the highway,
save for a little bit of elevated road noise, maybe,
you know, touch more wallowy suspension feel,
it feels like your garden variety luxury crossover SUV.
Very plush vehicle on the highway.
But when I pulled into the off-road park here,
I had sort of pangs of a knife to a gunfight.
- Yeah.
- Because when you see the modified Wranglers and CJs,
with serious lifts and tires,
I think there was a little bit of,
this was the only Grand Cherokee on this event.
And I think more people than just us
were wondering how well it would handle.
- Like, what are you doing here with that?
- Exactly.
- It was the only Grand Cherokee
that we brought, that we saw at the Badlands,
at the Jeep Jamboree.
And it's just quite astonishing
to see what it can actually do.
But yeah, when you showed up and pulled in,
everybody just,
you could almost feel like the record scratch at the bar,
or the scene just kinda stops,
and everyone looks and goes,
"Wait a minute, you're gonna really wheel that thing?"
- Yeah.
- And we did.
And it works brilliantly.
And I have to say the 4xe silent motoring system
is just fantastic.
- It is.
And I really preferred to do some of the serious obstacles
in all-electric mode.
- I would say
that it is not a hundred percent silent though.
- No.
- You still hear,
and there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance there,
because I'm hearing Jetsons-like sounds,
but we're doing Flintstones like stuff.
- Yeah.
I mean it still has to have that low speed electric noise
that's required for any electric car.
- Yes.
- But it's still, I mean frankly,
when I'm wheeling through either one of these,
either the Wrangler or the Grand Cherokee,
in electric mode,
the loudest thing around is me.
- And I like having a little bit of motor noise,
is helpful to know,
it helps you kind of gauge
how much accelerator pedal you're giving it, you know,
when you need to climb, or get over an obstacle.
- Exactly.
And the thing is it does have four wheel drive systems,
like the Wrangler does,
but it's a little bit different.
In fact, what I'm gonna do right now is,
I'm gonna put it in to four low,
'cause we're out here amongst the dunes.
You gotta shift it into neutral.
- Yeah.
- You push and hold the four low button.
Good.
Put it back in drive.
Off you go.
That kind of just illustrates I think, my main difference
between the Grand Cherokee and the Wrangler.
And I liken it to a coffee analogy, a coffee maker analogy.
The Wrangler is an espresso machine.
You have to know exactly what you're doing,
in order to make something good out of it.
You have to know what button to push, what lever to pull,
what setting to put it in.
You are the one responsible for going off road.
And the Grand Cherokee is not like that.
The Grand Cherokee
is like one of those all-in-one super fancy coffee machines.
You put a cuff in.
- Point and shoot.
- Yeah, you push a button, out pops a latte,
with the art on the top.
- Ha ha ha.
- It's super easy to do,
but it's more just about knowing
what setting you have to put it in,
and what kind of button to push,
as opposed to matching the vehicle up to the terrain.
So it's still capable, it's still does things,
but it's not as much fun, I think as the Wrangler.
- And if you're a true coffee aficionado,
you can tell the difference.
- Yes.
- And, you want that level of customization
that you get with the Wrangler.
- Yep, exactly.
- The other advantage I think that the Wrangler has,
is that you could take the top and doors off,
which is normally an advantage.
Out here right now, it wasn't so much an advantage
because it's dry and dusty as hell.
- Yes.
- And anytime we had just the windows open,
the whole interior gets, you know, schmutzed up.
- Yes.
Everything's sepia tone.
- Yes, absolutely.
- But in other conditions,
when the weather is conducive to that kind of thing,
taking the top and doors off
really is, there's no comparison to that.
- Absolutely.
And that's where the 4xe relative silence
is even better,
because then you hear the crickets chirping,
and the crickets, and the birds chirping,
and the environments all around you
kind of adds to the experience.
- When we're driving through that creek,
you hear the water running past the stones,
and you don't hear the engine idling.
It's a serene experience.
It's really cool.
It makes me really wonder what, you know,
the future of off-roading is gonna be like
when everything's starting to go electric,
and it's just silent, and quiet.
- Fully in with nature.
- The problem is for a lot of full electric off-roading,
there's nowhere to charge.
The infrastructure is still not caught up
with normal electric vehicles.
I can't imagine what it's gonna be like
trying to get things to rural areas,
to try and charge up off-road vehicles.
That's gonna be even more difficult.
- Yeah.
And at the entrance to this park, there's a couple,
there's a Jeep Trailhead chargers.
But those are not DC fast chargers.
- Right.
- And even to plug in these vehicles,
it's really more time than we have to spare.
- Exactly.
The powertrain is the same between the two Jeeps.
It's that turbocharged two liter, four cylinder engine,
matched up with an electric motor,
and a larger battery pack than most hybrids have,
because it's a plug-in hybrid.
So it's making 375 horsepower and 470 pounds feet of torque,
which, that's the Wrangler.
And I think it's the same in the Grand Cherokee as well.
- I believe so.
- You don't get the same electric efficiency
out of the two of them.
The Grand Cherokee has,
I think 25 miles of all-electric range.
The Wrangler gets something like 22,
but I've been able to get much more
out of them in electric range, in both of those vehicles,
just through some normal testing.
- I don't feel that the 4xe plug-in hybrid powertrain
is a particularly polished,
refined sounding or feeling powertrain.
- Yes.
- And so in that respect,
it feels a little more incongruous,
in this otherwise luxurious Grand Cherokee,
versus being in a Wrangler Rubicon,
which kind of feels like a farm implement to start with.
That's part of its appeal.
- Yeah.
- So I think the Wrangler
kind of wears the 4xe powertrain a little bit better
than the Grand Cherokee,
in terms of your expectations of that vehicle.
But the benefits are the same in both.
And that was one thing
that I think we were both surprised by,
is when we put it into e-save mode,
to use the gas engine to charge the battery,
we were putting back a significant amount of charge
in the battery,
that we were then able to use,
on obstacles that we encountered later in the day.
- Yeah.
We got about what, nine or 10 miles of range
in electric mode only, when we were wheeling the Wrangler,
and a little bit more than that in the Grand Cherokee.
And then when we were off road.
- It was, it was basically enough
for us to spend the morning in electric mode.
- Yes.
- And by lunchtime, we were spent.
- But then you switch off between them.
and then we were talking to a couple of other 4xe owners
who had the same experiences,
that once your battery's drained,
you put it in e safe mode between off-road obstacles,
and then put it in electric mode,
to actually do the obstacle,
and it works brilliantly that way.
- Yeah.
- Especially when you're going downhill.
If you have it in a low gear,
if you have it in like four low,
and you just engage the electric drive,
you don't need to shift down into first gear at all.
You just let the electric motor
break torque you all the way down,
and it works really, really well.
- Yeah, smooth.
- Yeah.
So when we were testing the two side by side,
we put 'em up pretty much the same obstacles
the entire time.
And the Grand Cherokee could do 90%
of what the Wrangler could do.
There was only one obstacle that we actually tried,
that the Grand Cherokee could not actually do,
and that was a special climb
up into a tube, basically a tunnel.
But it didn't do it because it was wet,
and the tires were wet, it couldn't patch.
- Tires were wet, rocks were wet.
- Yep.
And we couldn't get the rear axle to lock.
Despite the fact that it says it has a locking rear axle,
there's no button in here to lock it yourself.
So it's just an automatic kind of thing.
We couldn't necessarily get it to do it.
So it didn't meet that expectation.
But it did everything else we threw at it, mostly undamaged.
(both laughing)
I might have spontaneously restyled it just a little bit.
- There might need to be a little remove and replace
front fascia part in the future.
- But overall, I mean the capability of the thing,
is really astonishing.
And it didn't just surprise us,
it surprised everybody at the Jeep Jamboree we took it to.
- I saw there were,
at least once I heard one of the trail guides
kind of hang out after they were officially
done with the obstacle,
and they basically said,
"I wanna see if that Trailhawk can do it."
(both laughing)
And I think they were pleasantly surprised as well.
- Yeah, I mean all of the Jeep guys
who've been to a lot of their Jeep launch events,
knew that the Grand Cherokee,
there's a reason that there's a Trail Rated badge
on the side of it.
And not every Grand Cherokee has that Trail Rated badge.
They actually test these things,
and they make sure that that Trail Rated badge
means that it can do the things that they're advertising,
and it really can.
And it's a capable off-road vehicle
that's also a family vehicle.
- And I think that's what really needs to be stressed,
is the dual mode nature of this Grand Cherokee.
Like I said, I drove it the better part of three hours
coming down from Chicago,
and it is comfortable, and pleasant on the highway,
in a way that no Wrangler Rubicon can be.
- Yeah, I drove the Wrangler Rubicon four hours
down from Ann Arbor to this off-road park.
I did not have quite the same pleasant,
luxurious experience that you did.
- Yes.
- It's not nearly as bad as it used to be.
I mean, Wranglers used to be serious farm implements.
Now they've been civilized quite a bit,
but it's still louder.
It's windier, it still has much looser steering,
because you've still got solid axles front and rear.
You don't on a Grand Cherokee
- You're making lots of corrections,
especially in crosswinds.
- Yeah.
It feels like you're piloting a sailboat down the highway.
It can be an issue sometimes.
But you get used to that.
The thing is, a lot of Wrangler owners just kind of go,
"Eh, it's the the price of entry for this thing."
- Exactly.
And, at this event,
98% of the vehicles here are Wranglers,
or CJs of some sort.
- Yeah.
And the other 2% basically was old Cherokee XJs, and us.
- And us in the Grand Cherokee.
The only one
- The only one,
but still successful in winning hearts and minds
of Jeep enthusiasts
who didn't think it could do the things it did.
- Another thing that is a key advantage,
at least of the vehicles we drove, as equipped,
and this raised my eyebrows,
this Grand Cherokee, while certainly not cheap,
was about what, eight grand cheaper
- than the Wrangler,
- than the Wrangler Rubicon.
Now granted that has got like
a $9,000 20th Anniversary package,
which has a lot of stickers and badges,
in addition to some functional things.
So if you're more careful with the options sheet
than these were, you can get a Wrangler Rubicon 4xe
probably cheaper.
But the way they were equipped, and again,
for the dual mode nature of this Grand Cherokee,
this strikes me as a lot better deal
than the Wrangler Rubicon.
- It does.
And again, it really just comes down to,
what are you gonna do with it?
You know, is it primarily
- Exactly.
- your family hauler that you might want
to take off to a campground somewhere?
Yep, then this would be a great choice,
probably over a Wrangler.
Or if you really are more about wheeling,
and you really like the idea
of having a four seasons convertible,
with a top removable door is removable,
then the Wrangler really does make better sense for that.
Yeah, that's just kind of the dual nature of these things.
It's not an apples to apples comparison.
- Exactly.
- It really isn't.
But then again, that's, I think what Jeep's idea is
that they're providing something for everybody.
You know, do you want the family car?
Do you want the adventure off-road?
You know, you could have both, or you can have either or.
Or we're gonna be providing updates on our journey
with this long-term Jeep Grand Cherokee all year long.
And if you'd like to learn more
just look out for it here on cars.com.