At first glance, an electric Jeep is a little destabilizing. It does not exceed 4.07 meters and weighs barely 1.6 tons. It’s designed on the same basis as a Peugeot 208, it’s not sold in the United States, and then it doesn’t really look like a 4 × 4. The Avenger, the first Jeep without a combustion engine since 1941 , is undoubtedly confusing, but the proposal seems to have to work since, to everyone’s surprise, this model was voted Car of the Year 2023.
The Renegade, another Jeep with a very European accent, plays the tough-as-nails, but the Avenger doesn’t see the point, and it succeeds. Manufactured in the Stellantis factory in Tichy, Poland, but supervised by a designer named Daniel Calonaci and designed by a manufacturer which, in Europe, has hoisted the green-white-red flag and achieves its best sales on the other side of the Alps, the Avenger is more Italian than American. Despite its twenty centimeters of ground clearance, its silhouette remains slender and the front end that the brand generally loves to oversize avoids adding more this time.
Everything that could weigh down the silhouette has been readjusted. The underbody protections such as the sheet metal bulges on the wheel arches are in minimum service. At Jeep, the mythology of the adventurer in 4 × 4 is no longer what it was, even if a four-wheel drive version (thanks to the installation on the rear axle of an additional engine) is planned for 2023 .
Frank accelerations
The interior, too, has softened. The interior is not very special, but its presentation is modern, straight and pleasing to the eye – so many compliments that we have rarely had the opportunity to offer on board a Jeep -, despite a central screen too tight and a fairly average multimedia system.
The 54 kWh of the battery make it possible to approach 400 km of autonomy, thanks to the contained weight of the car and the new electric motor from the Stellantis group, produced in Trémery, near Metz, and which develops 156 hp. The accelerations are frank and, even without being hair-raising, they give tone to the Avenger, which takes full advantage of the flexibility offered by electric traction. This is, again, fairly new for a Jeep.
The brand’s management hopes that the newcomer, whose attractive price is not currently planned to be lowered (36,500 euros before the ecological bonus of 5,000 euros), will break the glass ceiling faced by this builder. Jeep has a nice rating of sympathy, but last year registered just over 106,000 vehicles in Europe.
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