Jeep hasn’t been a secret for a long time. It has planned to offer a new 100% electric urban SUV in addition to its Renegade. The manufacturer of the famous Wrangler – archetype of the pure and hard 4×4 – even organized leaks this summer. And, this time, he officially reveals his name: jeep Avenger. We’ll tell you more.
Like many other brands, Jeep is electrifying its ranges in Europe but also across the Atlantic, where regulatory pressure is not yet as strong. What is surprising then is that this label, with 1.5 million SUVs and 4x4s sold per year – the most profitable of the ¬Stellantis group – wants to become the world leader in electrics in its specialty. And Christian Meunier, the Frenchman at the head of Jeep since 2019, to ensure that “100% of its sales will be exclusively electric by 2030 in Europe and still 50% in the United States on the same date”. It is true that across the Atlantic, the ambitious and recent climate plan of the Biden administration provides for large subsidies for these emission-free models and that California is legislating against the sale of thermal cars in 2035. And it is rather solemn that Christian Meunier, the big boss of Jeep Avenger, explains that it “is a forward-thinking strategy to ensure that millions of Jeep fans around the world continue to have a planet to explore and to protect.” First demonstration with this Jeep Avenger, whose name has just been revealed in parallel with the presentation of two other more unexpected electric 4x4s: the Jeep Recon and the Wagoneer S project.
A Jeep SUV in the name of Dodge
As early as 2018, Jeep confirmed an electric “baby SUV” project, and images were officially presented in the spring of 2022. Then fake-real leaks this summer. From now on, we know that this 100% electric and 4×4 rival of the Peugeot e-2008, DS3 Crossback E-Tense, or Opel Mokka-e, is called Avenger. A surname already used in the ex-Fiat-Chrysler group by a bland Coupe Dodge from 1995, then on a sedan presented at the Paris Motor Show in 2006 and marketed, for a time, here.
But this new Jeep Avenger completely changes course, whether in bodywork (SUV), type of propulsion (only electric) and size, since the Avenger must register below the current Renegade, which displays 4 .24m long. An SUV marketed since the start of the 2014 school year remains in the catalog but is only offered in a hybrid or rechargeable hybrid version. However, this rechargeable hybrid-type Jeep Renegade 4xe did not completely convince us in terms of driving pleasure or sobriety. No more than its technical cousin, the Jeep Compass 4xe, another PHEV SUV that is even more perfectible.
The commercial launch of the Jeep Avenger at the Mondial 2022
However, the Jeep Avenger must inaugurate the 100% electric “all-road” category from the start of the school year. No thermal version is, therefore, to be expected. Presented to the public at the Paris Motor Show on October 17, the Avenger begins its marketing via a launch edition – it’s becoming classic – with the first deliveries promised in the first quarter of 2023. This small Jeep which is positioned – at least in size – below the Renegade, shows these new images, which confirm a sleek and solid body design, the essential seven-bar grille, or rear door handles in the uprights. On the other hand, this Jeep Avenger SUV continues to hide its interior even if Jeep evokes “a modern and technologically advanced interior, with plenty of space for people and luggage.” Similarly, Jeep does not detail any technical characteristics.
A technical basis of 2008 Electric
But Automobile Magazine has already revealed to you that this Jeep Avenger SUV will have the e-CMP platform of the Peugeot e-2008 and DS 3 Crossback E-Tense. Two French front-wheel drive SUVs today offer a 50 kWh battery and a 136 hp electric unit. We can also confirm that if this Jeep Avenger appears under the Stellantis banner, this electric baby SUV project began long before the merger between the French group PSA and its Italian-American counterpart Fiat-Chrysler. However, if it uses a French technical platform, the 4×4 Jeep Avenger wants to be a “real” Jeep and confirms, unlike the Peugeot e-2008 or Opel Mokka-e, a 4 x 4 functionality that Jeep describes as “all weather.” Which is to say – even if Jeep announces “ground clearance as well as impressive angles of attack and departure for its segment,” – that the Avenger remains a “soft-roader” and not a reduced-wattage Jeep Wrangler. To have such a 4 x 4, pure and hard, 100% electric, it, therefore, seems that we will have to wait for the future Jeep Recon, which will be launched in 2023.
- read more: Jeep Wagoneer S: the Range Rover Velar competitor
- read more: Overheating problem of BMW i4 M50 electric car
400 km of autonomy for the electric Jeep Avenger
Confirming its vocation as an everyday SUV rather than a long-term adventurer, the Jeep Avenger announces an electric range of 400 km. A figure to be compared to the 345 km homologated during the WLTP cycle for the Peugeot e-2008. It is true that the latest updates to its powertrain have improved the effective range of the lion’s electric urban SUV. And other progress is expected, in particular thanks to the new Emotions M3 electric block (136 to 200 hp), whose production has just started in Trémery in Moselle. Thus, the DS 3 E-tense must be the first electric SUV from Stellantis to inaugurate it, but the first 100% electric Jeep in history, for which we can expect an entry price of around 39,000dollars, should logically be able to benefit from it too.
After the Jeep Renegade was assembled in Melfi in Italy for the European markets, the Avenger will be the second Jeep Made in Europe since produced in Poland at Tychy, a site that already manufactures the Fiat 500 -thermal- and their Abarth derivatives or the current Lancia Ypsilon.