Guys, Mike here with Jeeps on the Run. Welcome back to the channel! Most of you have probably already watched our one-month review on the all-new 4xe. We are now about a year and a half in with a little over 20,000 miles on it, so we’re going to talk about the issues we’ve had, maybe some tips and tricks, and let you know how we still feel about this 4xe. So, let’s get started.

The first thing we’re going to talk about is winter driving and the effects that cold weather has on the 4xe. If you’re never going to drive this Jeep in a winter or cold weather climate, this section is probably not for you. Generally speaking, it’s still a Jeep—drives like a Jeep, handles like a Jeep, great for snow and all the off-road and inclement weather. Perfect. Huge plus: instant heat. It’s got an electric heater; we’ve talked about that in a previous video. We’re going to focus on the negatives. We all know the positives. If you’re interested in the full review, click the link above. We’re going to have a full review of this entire Jeep, but for now, we’ll focus on the negatives.

Normally, in the summer months, we see about 30 miles on a full range, 29 to 30 miles. In the winter, we see 23 to 24. So, there is a loss in range on the battery life in the winter. Having said that, we do store it in a heated garage, so those numbers may vary if you keep it outside. We also charge it in a heated garage, so that could vary depending on your charging status.

The other thing that you will read about is called FORM (Fuel Oil Refresh Mode). If you Google it, you’ll find endless topics on this situation. Basically, what the vehicle tries to do is, if it’s running on electric too long, there’s multiple things—we’re not going to dig into the FORM situation in this video. It could be another hour-long video in itself. But it is a negative thing that you will read. What I will tell you is the FORM function—maybe not feature, but function—of the Jeep worked properly for us. We did not get stuck in FORM. It did show up every once in a while, but we were not stuck in FORM and forced to do oil changes or trick the vehicle out of the Fuel Oil Refresh Mode to act normally. For us, FORM was not an issue, and I know I’m not alone. You’ll see people complaining about it, but most people don’t go on the internet and type when they have positive things to say, unfortunately.

The one thing we did see that might be confused with FORM, but it’s not, is it’ll say “electric not available.” Even with a full charge, we noticed that at temperatures in single digits, low single digits, or even in the negatives, the vehicle would actually use the internal combustion engine (ICE) to travel. When the engine would warm up, then for whatever reason, the electric portion would become available. This was not a huge inconvenience for us because my wife drives the vehicle, and she has a 60-mile commute each day. So, if she goes to work on internal combustion, if it warms up during the day, she comes home on electric. For us, it was a non-issue. We still end up going one way or the other on internal combustion anyway. It wasn’t an issue, but it is something to pay attention to in winter driving.

As far as everything else goes from a winter standpoint, we love it. Heated seats and a heated steering wheel. The question is, does that degrade battery life? If it does, it’s very minimal. It’s not enough to talk about. I think you actually lose more from your AC in the summer than you do from the heating and the heat elements in the winter.

The Jeep 4xe is the number one selling PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle). That takes Toyota, Honda, all these manufacturers that have been doing hybrids for a while—Wrangler is the number one selling PHEV. So, that tells you a little something about this. What I will tell you is I do feel like, of all the hybrid vehicles, this leaves people the most uneducated. People don’t understand it, they don’t know about it, and because they don’t know about it, I think they’re afraid. Especially Jeep owners—myself included. I was against any kind of hybrid electric. It was not my thing. If you’re interested in teetering into that electric field, that electric category, this is a great way to get your feet wet. I speak from experience. I’m not a Tesla person. In my head, I can’t do all-electric. So, for me, this was a great hurdle because, as some people might say, “Well, it runs out of battery, you’re stuck.” Well, no. This drives like a normal Jeep. In fact, it’s more seamless than an all-gas vehicle, just in the simple fact of the way it drives.

Number one plug-in hybrid vehicle. The other thing we should mention is this is always a hybrid vehicle, even when the battery is dead. There is a reserve capacity built into the battery inside the Jeep that allows you to never lose that full torque. You never lose the full power. If the battery is dead, those motors still run as they’re designed. You won’t notice a difference when the vehicle is dead versus when it’s got a full charge. Obviously, it won’t go into full electric mode, right? Understand that. But you will not notice a lack of power or whatever. It’s always a hybrid. It’s always doing what it’s designed to do. They’ve engineered that into the battery system. So, again, do not think that when the battery goes dead, the vehicle is going to drive differently because it doesn’t. Jeep has got that figured out.

Alright, so let’s talk about the issues we’ve had. This is one of the first 4xe’s. When this came out and we purchased it, most dealerships hadn’t even had their first one yet, and no one on the road knew what it was, which is still almost the case. To this day, my wife pulls into her work and people are like, “It’s so quiet, I thought it was electric.” And then you tell them it is, and they’re like, “I had no idea.” So, they’re so uninformed. But having said that, this was one of the—I’m not going to say first, but one of the early-stage 4xe’s. We have had very, very—I’m going to say—little to no problems. If you look back at our other videos, we had some clicking noises coming from the front suspension. It turns out that was a loose ball joint. That actually was an issue that was not even 4xe-specific. You were finding that on standard JLs and Gladiators. It was just re-torqueing down a ball joint. A 15-minute service, and we were on our way.

The other thing people are complaining about is loose fuses. Just because I’m reading the internet like you guys are, I come in and check all my fuses. I had one or two that maybe weren’t seated in all the way, but I never had an issue with a fuse that left me stranded, so I can’t say that that caused me any issues. We brought it in for a series of updates. At this point, it’s been a long time ago, but months after owning it, there were about nine updates that the vehicle came out with, and a lot of things changed during those updates. If you’re buying a 4xe new, you’ll probably never know what they were; they’re coming that way from the factory now. Little things like the latch button—when you go to push the button for regenerative braking, that would restart every time you restarted the car. So, if you like to leave the regenerative braking on, that didn’t stay. Not a big deal, more annoying than anything else. They changed a couple of mappings with some things. They changed some things. Most everything in those nine updates, as a consumer or driver, we would never notice. The only thing I did notice is the regenerative braking changed pretty significantly. It used to be as soon as you let off the gas, it was like someone hit the brakes. You really felt that drag. Now they’ve refined it, so imagine before it was from off to on. Now, when you’re off the brakes, you get a little bit of a ramping up on that regenerative braking, so it’s not as harsh. It’s easier to drive if you’ve never driven one before. So, I think that was a positive change.

As far as problems go, the ball joint is really the only problem we had. There was a—I’m not going to call it a recall—but there was a batch of 12-volt batteries that went out on these vehicles that were bad. They were not holding charge or losing charge rapidly. At the time they did my update, they replaced my battery. So, I’ve seen some people with stranded Jeeps because of a 12-volt battery. I never had the issue, but my dealership is always on top of it, and they replaced it for me already.

The only other thing we had was we did have a check engine light, and it was for the fuel cap. What was happening is the tether that holds the fuel cap on was so long, it was getting stuck under the fuel cap. As you tightened it down, it would allow some vacuum leaks, so we were getting an error there. Again, Jeep put a new fuel cap on it. How could you complain about that? I see people on these forums reading all these negative things about FORM and stranded Jeeps and loose fuses and all these things on and on. I always say, if you go to the hospital looking for sick people, you’re going to find sick people, right? If you’re on these forums looking for negative, you’re going to find it. We have had very, very few negative issues, little things go wrong with this Jeep. I’ve had more go wrong with other vehicles that are not first-one-off technology. So, as far as reliability, I wouldn’t think twice.

Alright, so we’re going to talk about a few of the little things that you should know about that are different from a standard JL or Wrangler. If this whole thing’s new to you, this stuff’s probably irrelevant. But these are things you should know that if you’re going to compare to a standard Wrangler, these are different.

If you look inside here, to me, this is not a big deal. We don’t camp in this, and we don’t do anything like that, so it’s not a big deal. But if you look here, you’ve got this six- to eight-inch step up on the Jeep here. So, when you go to put your seats down, you no longer have a nice flat surface. You have a step up. Again, I see people who overland or whatever, and they put air mattresses in here, and it’s kind of a big deal to them. You lose some storage. You definitely lose some height here. For me, not an issue. We don’t use it for that kind of stuff, but it is something to consider, as small as it may be. If that’s a hurdle for you, it’s something to pay attention to.

I’ll show you some other stuff. Another thing that’s unique to the 4xe is the fuel door. Now, I know this seems kind of dumb and obvious, right? Many cars have a fuel door, and you push the button on the dash to open it. This is a little unique in the fact that this system pressurizes itself for multiple reasons, and we get into that in the other video you can watch as well. But the difference on this is when you push the fuel door release, you get a delay before this door actually opens. Now, this one was only a few seconds, but it can be up to 15 seconds. So, you might be spamming that little button thinking, “Why is this not opening?” What it’s doing is it’s depressurizing the system, so when you go to unlock your fuel cap, the system is depressurized and doesn’t spray back at you. Again, we talked about why it’s pressurized in another video, but that is something to pay attention to. And like every other Jeep that has—or other vehicle that has—an electronic fuel door, there is a manual fuel release right inside the cargo area as well if you ever need that.

The other thing we should mention—again, we talked about this in another video—is the battery is located underneath the back seats. These back seats actually do sit a little differently than the standard JL, but mostly noticed is this area under here. You do lose cargo area. It’s not a lot of cargo area. For me, mostly it’s all the crap that my kids let slide behind the seat, so it’s a win for me that nothing goes back there. But if that’s something that you stored stuff under in your Jeep before, you no longer have that option because it’s full of batteries. And because of that lack of space under the seat, your rear floor mats are definitely different. So, if you’re looking for those WeatherTech or all-weather floor mats, they have to be 4xe-specific when it comes to the back seats as well as the cargo area because of that hump we discussed earlier.

This is one of the first original 2021 4xe’s. This is the High Altitude edition, which has the painted bumpers, the painted door handles, everything’s color-matched, and it came with the blue tow hooks. The newer ones, the ’22s, now all 4xe’s come with the blue hooks, which I think is a great idea. They should embrace that blue branding. Previously, it was just the High Altitude and the Rubicon. Now, all 4xe’s have it. So, when you’re going down the road, you can kind of pay attention to the blue, and you can train your friends. If you see one that doesn’t have blue and it’s a 4xe, you’ll know it’s a ’21 if it’s a Sahara. We can go into that detail later.

At the end of the day, this vehicle has been awesome for us. You’ll watch our other videos. We drag it behind our RV, so it flat-tows beautifully, just like all the Jeep products do. Works awesome for that. We’ve got a ton of miles on this thing being flat-towed, and it’s truly an awesome Jeep. It’s definitely a Jeep because we’ve already put a new windshield in it. If you’re a Jeep owner, you know what I’m talking about.

In conclusion, I highly, highly recommend the 4xe. It’s been great to our family. With gas prices on the rise, we have the charger at home. Again, all full details—if you’re more interested in a real deep dive into the technical aspects of this Jeep, you can follow the other link. I’ll have a link at the end of the video as well. But at the end of the day, in conclusion, over 20,000 miles, a year and a half, and it’s been a great vehicle for us. I would gladly purchase another one, no questions asked. As always, if you’ve got questions, please comment below, please like and subscribe. If you’re looking for one of these vehicles or any Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram product, please let us know. We’ve got an awesome relationship with Ray Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Fox Lake. We also have our great event coming up in December, and someone will win a 2022 Jeep Wrangler Sport Altitude Edition, so you don’t want to miss that either. Check out jeepsontherun.com and follow us on Facebook. We’ll see you on the trails or wherever this thing might take us next.