Jeep Renegade 4xe Trailhawk

ROAD TEST

Price £36,500 Power 237bhp Torque 258lb ft 0-60mph 6.7sec 30-70mph in fourth 7.1sec Fuel economy 41.9mpg CO2 emissions 51g/km 70-0mph 48.2m

The remarkable growth of the Jeep brand’s European business since it became part of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, now itself part of Stellantis, has been fuelled by several models but none more so than the one we’re revisiting this week: the smallest and cheapest Jeep but one of the most important, and now also one of the most technically bold.

The Italian-built, Fiat-platformed Renegade was unveiled in 2014, and in its second full calendar year on sale (2016) turned Jeep into the 100,000-a-year player in the European car market it had previously only ever dreamed of becoming. The bonanza didn’t stop there. The firm broke through the 150,000-unit threshold in 2018, with 45% of its Continental sales volume coming from you know where. Now the car is leading Jeep into the electrified era. Arriving on UK roads late last year, the Renegade 4xe became Jeep’s first plug-in hybrid and it will be the first of several PHEV models set to drive down the lab-test CO2 emissions of its showroom fleet.

This won’t be some bit-part player adopted by a few but avoided by those who want ‘a proper Jeep’, either. It’s expected to account for a sizeable proportion of the car’s sales mix, and in one key respect – by dint of being one of only three four-wheel-drive options – it could be regarded as among the few proper Jeeps in the Renegade model range.

DESIGN AND ENGINEERING

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The Renegade’s European production base is the old Fiat Sata plant in Melfi, Italy. The facility is shared with the closely related Fiat 500X, but the Renegade is also more distantly related (via Fiat’s Smallwide compact car platform) to the Fiat 500L and Tipo.

Like all other Jeeps save for the Wrangler, it has a unitary or monocoque chassis and independent suspension at all corners. Unlike others, it’s pretty diminutive – only just over 4.2m long, with a wheelbase of less than 2.6m – although a full complement of four passenger doors and two rows of seats make it a reasonably practical proposition.

Since 2018, Jeep has offered European buyers 1.0- and 1.3-litre petrol engines, in the latter case with and without turbocharging, with and without four-wheel drive, and developing up to 188bhp. A 168bhp 2.0-litre diesel is also available.

The new Renegade 4xe (pronounced ‘four-by-ee’) joins the range at the upper end of the buying spectrum. Its 1.3-litre four-cylinder petrol engine is ostensibly the same as you’ll find in other Renegades, but the driveline to the rear isn’t. While the 4xe’s petrol engine drives the front wheels through a specially adapted six-speed torqueconverter automatic transmission, a mechanical four-wheel drive system is dispensed with and an ‘electric rear axle’ is adopted instead. This consists of a 60bhp, 184lb ft synchronous motor packaged over the rear axle and fed by an 11.4kwh drive battery that’s carried along the transmission tunnel immediately ahead of the 37-litre petrol tank.

The 4xe is available in two mechanically distinct variations. Lower-trim versions use a 128bhp combustion engine, while the rangetopping Trailhawk variant gets 178bhp of piston power, for up to 237bhp of total system output. That’s a broadly competitive figure for a compact plug-in hybrid SUV.

As the ‘maximum capability’ version of the 4xe, the Trailhawk also gets 15mm more ground clearance than lesser trims, as well as underbody protection plates, M+S (mud and snow) tyres and the full range of electronically controlled, off-road-intended traction control and hill descent modes.

INTERIOR

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Compact, boxy and pugnaciously cute as it may be, the Renegade just about counts as a proper four-seat, five-door family car. To squeeze three on its back seat would be a trial, but two younger adults fit just fine.

The relocation of the 12V battery

to the side of the boot compartment, along with the packaging of the electric drive motor and power inverter under the floor, has affected boot capacity. The storage space is a little narrow and shallow by class standards and there’s only 330 litres under the load-bay cover, which is a good deal less than even a VW Golf hatchback offers until you start folding seats and loading to the roof. However, there is space for a fullsized spare wheel under the floor if you want one. If you don’t, the splitlevel boot floor makes the best of what storage volume there is.

The driving environment is quite distinctive, characterful and colourful in places, although some notable low points on perceived quality rather betray this Renegade’s status as ostensibly a pretty cheap crossover with an expensive powertrain. Luckily for Jeep, its cars have always had functional cabins finished quite sparsely and with plain, tough materials. The Renegade’s certainly feel quite plain; not always so tough or hard-wearing, though. The shiny, wobbly mouldings used around the steering column are like those that other manufacturers only fit to prototypes. Elsewhere, flimsy, rough-feeling seat adjustment levers, dull-looking ‘leathers’, wobbly exterior mirrors and hollowsounding doors might leave a slightly sour taste in your mouth.

The driving position is medium high, granting good visibility in most directions, on a broadly comfortable driver’s seat that lacks some adjustability. The secondary controls are chunkily proportioned. Having

a good-sized scroll knob for the touchscreen infotainment system, for example, would be useful when driving in gloves or with dirty hands.

Jeep’s alterations to the instrument pack for the PHEV version of the Renegade didn’t seem to make quite so much sense to our testers. By removing the standard car’s analogue speedometer and replacing it with a fixed ‘power/ charging gauge’, it has taken away something useful and replaced it with something at least a bit superf luous. Being told how hard the car’s powertrain is working or regenerating power at any one time seems a little needless when the position and action of your right foot can inform you just as well. That’s true particularly considering that the digital speedometer that has been

added is generally given too little prominence on the wider instrument layout, although that does depend on the display mode you’ve chosen for the slightly antiquated-looking digital trip computer.

PERFORMANCE

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Some manufacturers are starting to integrate the technology associated with PHEVS into the driving experience in a pretty slick and seamless way. It’s early days, of course, but Jeep isn’t at that stage.

This firm’s models were among the original ‘dual-purpose’ off-roaders, and you might well consider this one a ‘multi-purpose’ vehicle of a sort. What it lacks, however, is much in the way of overarching consistency between its various and discrete

 Trailhawk gets a two-tone bonnet as standard and can be had with a contrast roof as an option, but the former is a sticker decal rather than a painted finish, which might seem like another perceived quality bugbear.

 Charging port is on the nearside rear quarter panel, opposite the fuel filler. The fastest charge it will accept is at 7.4kw AC, taking about two hours to go from empty to full.

 Look beneath the car and you’ll discover the Trailhawk’s off-roading protection, which consists of steel plates underneath the sump, fuel tank and rear axle.

 Range-topping Trailhawk versions of the Renegade, intended for extra off-road capability, get M+S tyres and 15mm more ground clearance than their range-mates.

It looked similar before the 2018 facelift

Width 980mm Height 400-720mm Length 700-1430mm  Boot is a little narrow and shallow, although outright carrying space is usefully large when you start folding the seats and loading to the roof.

Typical leg room 690mm  Back seats offer plenty of head room for taller passengers but less outright knee room. Getting three adults or child seats across here would be tough.

 Access to the driver’s seat is easy but for a slightly high sill. Driving position is raised but comfortable. Steering would benefit from a little more reach adjustment.

 Nowhere is the Renegade’s unlovely fit and finish more evident than with the thin, shiny plastics behind the steering wheel.

 Battery regen setting button is buried down by the handbrake switch and the drive mode buttons are way over on the centre stack so they feel like afterthoughts.

 Renegade has plenty of ‘Easter egg’ surprise design features, but this inch-high outline of Bigfoot striding along the base of the rear window is our favourite.