Bren
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2016
- Threads
- 1
- Messages
- 175
- Reaction score
- 303
- Location
- Boston, MA
- Vehicle(s)
- 2021 Granite Crystal Rubicon 4XE
Thank you for sharing, great stuff.I picked up my 4xe Rubicon today and thought I’d post a few thoughts and (maybe useful?) info as I have a 750mi drive over 2 days with it. I’m hoping to answer some questions I know I still had and also happy to answer anything the great folks here might have also.
I have all factory options including the sky one-touch, with the only exception being the Advanced Safety Group.
A quick note since I think context is important in any discussion. I’ve owned 3 Jeeps, a TJ, early JK and late JKUR (AEV). I’ve driven the 2.0 and 3.6 JLUR’s many times at length in various conditions on and off-road. I have not driven the new 392 or the Diesel but do have a couple hundred miles of experience with AEV converted 5.7 and 6.4 JKUR’s.
I figured I’d break down each area and hopefully add/update specific info as more folks receive them and also provide feedback on experience.
Performance
TLDR;
It’s by no means slow, and it’s absolutely quicker than the 2.0 and 3.6. Can you smoke the tires, no. Can you beat a 392 off the line, maybe. Would you lose to a 392 after about 1.5-2s off the line, likely. Is it eerily quiet getting from 0-60, very.
Experience;
No one seems to be posting anything about this, anywhere. I was determined to figure out exactly how good or bad it was but instead I realized why exactly no one says anything about it. It’s power is oddly transparent, if that can even be a description? You just don’t think about it. No, it does not blow you away and throw you back into your seat. It’s still a box with knobby tires that weighs 6k+ lbs. All the hp/tq in the world can only overcome so much of physics so set your expectations accordingly. I think in many cases we perceive speed based on sound and the level of “roughness” or involvement going fast might require. The 4xe is eerily quiet. Even when you stand on it, you are just sort of going 80mph all of a sudden with no real fuss. You hear minimal noise from the 2.0 and in pure electric the instant torque is fantastic but it doesn’t give the perception of fast in any way. The lack of a launch control feature should be a dead giveaway, also. If you like to “feel” like you’re going fast, this isn’t it. I personally love it, it’s a fantastic mix of power and efficiency in a car that’s all about balancing functionality and capability.
Exterior
- You need to like the color blue if you buy the Rubicon, less so on the Sahara’s.
- The “RUBICON” lettering blue appears to have some metallic in it, it changes depending on light. The tow hooks are definitely more of what I’d call Electric Baby Blue. The hood decal blue is essentially flat. One thing is for sure, they don’t “appear” to all match exactly but it has more to do with the material they are either printed on or applied to that influences it. It’s not significant by any means and after the first time many folks won’t think twice. OCD folks however, be warned.
- The gas tank only opens with the unlock button inside. I swear I saw a video where you could just push it in from the outside of the car to open but even the sales team was confused on this one. I’m a fan of this for security purposes but I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere yet.
Interior
- You also need to like the color blue if you buy the Rubicon with black leather, less so on the Sahara, even less with cloth option and almost not at all with Saddle interior.
- I have the black leather option and got blue stitching on seats, door panels, dash, center console and shifters. We’ll call this the FULL blue option. The cloth variant appears to only have the blue on the seats and no where else. The saddle interior replaces all the blue with white, at least on the other one I saw at the dealer. Can likely make this list more precise as folks receive them, this is just my experience from the dealer and online.
- I can’t see a reason why the LED charging indicators on the dash are so huge. Yes, they are large as others have stated. It eats nearly any storage you have up there. However, it appears at first glance the 67 Designs stuff will work if you just use the driver/passenger side individual bases and not the full rail. I have the pieces to try and install tomorrow and will report back with photos. I only mention this as 67D is very popular already and I reached out to them about designing a new variant for the full rail option for the 4xe.
Modes, Buttons, Random
- There is no “Offroad +” button.
- Yes, it has 2H.
- The Max Regen button does NOT stay on after you restart the car. This appears contradictory to the documentation but likely a software thing they changed late and/or are still working on smoothing over with some politician. Not a big deal but I like others really like this feature. Once you get used to it, you can time it so you almost never have to actually depress the brake pedal to slow down.
- When Max Regen is on, letting off the gas fully will engage the brake lights automatically. Cool feature as it does slow you down fairly significantly and your back end wouldn’t last for long without it. I tested this in DC traffic, it works, well.
- The technician that did the PDI on mine said in their training they were told the 4xe can use the lower 87 octane fuel similar to the 3.6 even though the 2.0 requires Premium. Supposedly Jeep is using a different cam that allows the lower octane fuel to be used.
@bjm00se confirmed:
Fuel requirement on page 78 of the 4xe Owner's Manual Supplement:
Fuel Selection: 87 Octane (R+M)/2 Method, 0-15% Ethanol.
Real World Hybrid’ness
- I started on a full charge/full tank of gas when I picked up the car and got 27.8 miles of battery use in Hybrid mode over the course of ~150mi so far. I’m sure there are millions of variables here but this was mostly highway with max regen on. Will take time to get more numbers and data on this topic honestly. Just a starting point.
- It was completely down to 0% battery on the fuel gauge and <1% on the battery gauge when I stopped to plug in. I plugged into a L2 charger and it approximated 2h15m to fully charge. Not sure what variables this may have yet?
- You get the craziest stares when you pull into an EV spot with a Jeep. Everything from “WTF is this DB doing in the Tesla parking” to “This guy MUST be lost”. As soon as you plug it in, the look on peoples faces is easily worth every penny. :P
- It doesn’t appear that the battery gauge ever goes below <1%. This may be more EV ignorance, but I’m assuming it has some type of reserve as even when the fuel gauge had 0% it would still go into electric only when coasting or low speed on most occasions. It also seemed to never loose it’s full power potential. It seemed I still had all 470lb’s of hamsters even when battery was dry, I’ll play with it more though.
Donuts and 600 more miles coming soon. Hopefully this can be helpful, the forum and members have definitely helped me and I just wanted to contribute if possible.
Fire away with questions, post feedback and share your experiences as well!
The Tesla parking stares are probably warranted because you can't plug into those! I've driven an EV for over 4 years now, and usually when someone *deliberately* blocks an EV charger it's a large truck (think coal roll) or something like a Wrangler (which pisses me off as a Wrangler owner), so I think a bunch of EV drivers are probably approaching with a guilty-until-proven-innocent mindset. I'm sure there's a bunch of curiosity that follows though, once they realize their error. Nothing else like this out there yet.
Also FYI the locking fuel tank could be because they're pressurizing to extend the life of fuel? BMW i3 does that, although that car goes over 100 miles with only 1-2 gallon fuel capacity, so fuel is used much less. I'd be surprised and somewhat impressed if that's what Jeep was doing here.
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