More problematic are the advertised 35 klicks of electric autonomy. Around town and on secondary highways, they were fairly easy to attain requiring no feathering of throttle of hyper-miling. Drive the Jeep like any other model citizen and those 17.3 kWh will reliably eke out those 34 or so kilometres of totally emissions-free motoring. On the highway, on the other hand, range was not nearly as impressive; when I could get the 4xe to remain in EV mode, it could only get about 25 or so klicks of electric-only range.
And, as I said, that’s when I could get it to stay in EV mode. Multiple times — most frequently when I was cruising Ontario’s 407 — the Jeep would fire up the gas engine and when I tried to force the issue, it’d send me messages that “electric mode is not available.” At first I thought it was some form of fault — or that the 4xe’s computer was just trying to tell me that Hybrid mode would be far more efficient than Electric — but no, the 4xe was just running out of jam.