Our car: Jeep Avenger Summit
List price when new: £38,899 (range from £34,999)
Price as tested: Sun +Volcano contrast colour (£1,100), Infotainment pack (£500), Black leather upholstery (£900)
Official range: 249 miles (WLTP)
Test range (best/worst): 230 - 190 miles
Test efficiency: 3.7m/kWh
The electric Jeep Avenger arrived at the end of 2022 to a huge fanfare – and rightly so, I reckon. Not only is it Jeep’s first ever electric car, it’s also barely any larger than a Volkswagen Polo supermini and yet Stellantis squeezed in an official range of 249 miles. Good news, indeed – and it felt like the first sign that we were going to start seeing some interesting, more affordable new electric cars that weren’t generic large SUVs and crossovers.
But the real test of a car comes over time, so I wanted to run the Jeep Avenger – winner of the 2023 Car of the Year award – to find out if it lived up to the launch hype. And more importantly, to find out if it’s really a good, small electric family car that’s worth the sizeable chunk of cash that it commands. It wasn’t all plain sailing, in the end…
Money matters
It was a frustration that, at launch, Jeep estimated that the Avenger’s price would start from around £32,000, only for it to finally arrive in the UK starting from closer to £35,000. It’s a big jump.
More than that, the range-topping Summit model tested here is getting on for £39,000. With options, which include the £500 Infotainment Pack for in-built nav system and traffic sign info, leather upholstery and the rather lovely yellow paint, it costs £41,399… putting it into the “luxury tax” VED category. Ouch.
I’d add, at this point, that the Avenger Electric range starts from £35,000 for the Longitude model – and it’s not badly equipped, either. I even rather like it in the standard Ruby Red colour. I’d have to add the £350 Winter Pack, as heated seats are an essential for an EV in my book, but the point is that you can get an Avenger for about £35,500 (or £400-ish per month on finance) and it won’t feel poverty-spec.
Cheap? No. Competitive with rivals? Most of them, yes, but with the MG4 available for a lot less, and the VW ID.3 and Volvo EX30 for similar money, Jeep could really do with sweetening those finance deals.
Family usefulness
The Avenger is under 4.2 metres long, which is one of the reasons I like it so much. We need more small electric cars, and it strikes a really happy balance between dinky(ish) dimensions and useful interior roominess.
I’ve had issues with fitting my seven-year-old’s seatbelt-secured car seat in bigger family SUVs, but the Jeep was pretty good for this. Plus, there’s a light back there, and the higher stance of its SUV body shape gave her a good view out, so there were no complaints from the back.
A centre rear armrest would be nice, mind, but generally the Jeep was a hit with the family – not least as it looks brilliant. The chunky styling is one of the chief reasons you’d choose an Avenger; it’s a great design and I’d routinely find myself giving it a second glance to better appreciate that.
Real-world range
I ran the Avenger over winter (when you’ll always get a lower driving range than in warmer weather). The 51kWh Avenger proved to be impressively efficient despite the routinely cold and wet conditions, dropping to around 190 miles per charge during solid motorway mileage and creeping up to 220 miles of real-world range in more sedate B-road and urban use.
The 100kW charging speeds are par for the course at this price and class of electric car. I rarely saw it go over 80kW, in truth, but that’s good enough for a 100-mile top-up in 15 to 20 minutes, or a 10-80 per cent charge in about 30 to 40 minutes. These sorts of charging speeds are typical of the average electric family car at the moment. The Jeep’s winter efficiency is rather impressive, so public charging wasn’t needed too often anyway.
It’s a dog’s life
We have recently welcomed a second rescue dog into our family, so boot space is a priority more than ever. The Jeep’s 321-litre boot isn’t bad for a compact car and the flush boot floor made it easy for the dogs to jump in – or for us to throw in heavier items when necessary. All the plastics and textiles wore well, too, and wiped down easily so that the car still looked fresh even after a few very muddy months.
Given that we also had the grandparents in the back seats on a number of occasions, with no complaints, the fact that Stellantis has managed to squeeze such a useful boot and rear passenger space into a small electric car with a very usable range is impressive.
In fact, the general usefulness of the Jeep proved pretty faultless, so I’d heartily recommend it as a small family car in terms of practicality – whether you’re considering the electric version or the petrol models that have now joined the range.
But, before you rush out and buy one, there were some issues.
System failure
It had to happen at Christmas, didn’t it? A meal out with friends on the evening of the 23 December called for a trek into the Surrey Hills – 90mins or more each way for me. I had driven the car earlier so I knew that I’d have to rapid charge on the way home. No problem, as the stations at Petersfield would do nicely.
So, there I was at midnight with around 13 per cent battery remaining, my mind already on wrapping Christmas presents. But what was this? A red light of doom, winking at me from the charging socket? More doom was heralded from the dash, which was showing an “Electric Traction System failure” error and refusing to start.
I unplugged the Jeep, locked it and walked away for a few minutes to try the old “stop-it and start-it again” reset. The car started, so I tried the other charger, which resulted in the same error.
I reasoned that it may be a fault with the DC charging and that the AC charge function might work and at least get me home – albeit with a slow charge – so I managed to clear the error before limping to a fast AC charger at a Morrisons near Horndean, but I had no luck. The red error light was back.
Nothing for it but to call the RAC. By this point it was nearly 2am and I was told it may be 7am before someone could get to me, so I settled in to spend Christmas Eve morning trying to sleep in a supermarket car park.
To my astonishment, a very helpful independent rescue service was sent out by the RAC only 30 minutes later and managed to reset the car and get it charging simply by disconnecting and reconnecting the 12V battery. I was intensely annoyed; it was one of those infuriating “Why didn’t I think of doing that, two hours ago?” moments. Never mind. The rescue was very welcome and I managed to get a slow charge into the car – albeit I didn’t get home until 5am.
A lovely sting in the tail was the £60 parking fine I received from Euro Car Parks, as I stayed in the deserted charging bays at Morrisons for 6 minutes over the two-hour period. Photographic evidence of the stricken car being attended by roadside assistance wasn’t a good enough excuse. Apparently, I should have called them at the time, or provided written proof. Thanks, Euro Car Parks. Your Christmas spirit and general sense of understanding is dismally predictable.
Jeep looked at the car to ascertain the issue, but no faults were found. Which is sort of less reassuring than if there had been a clear fault that could be sorted. More worrying is that colleagues who have also run a Jeep Avenger Electric encountered intermittent screen and readout failure while driving to similar charging issues.
Interestingly, there are no reports that I’ve seen of other Stellantis models that use this same running gear suffering the same issues. The Jeep was the first car on sale with the new eCMP 2 platform, so may have suffered with software glitches that other Stellantis models have had resolved before they reached showrooms.
The Telegraph verdict
The reliability issues with the Jeep are even more frustrating, as everything else about it is genuinely great. I like the way it drives, the practicality it offers and the scrappy-yet-stylish ambience of the whole car. Some keener finance deals is all it needs, as I reckon a £300-per-month Avenger Electric would do very well.
What to make of the reliability? Clearly, it’s really disappointing and I struggled to trust the car afterwards. But I still used it routinely, covering another 4,000 miles without issue.
Would I still recommend it? Yes, because I rate the Jeep highly enough, and these press cars are early vehicles that have since received various software updates. Nonetheless, it’s a less than brilliant start for the Avenger. Or, on occasion, it wasn’t a start at all…
The critical time is now, as customer feedback will start to tell whether these issues were teething problems. I sincerely hope that the Jeep proves to be over its launch gremlins, as the Avenger in this form is too good to go unloved and unsold.
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