The electric vehicle tax credit is dead, EV sales are in free fall, and hybrids and gas-guzzling V-8 engines are all the rage.
It doesn’t seem like ideal timing to launch a new all-electric SUV in the United States, but Jeep is doing just that.
The Stellantis NV offroad brand unveiled the Recon this week — an EV with rugged four-wheeling looks including removable doors and windows not unlike its boxy, gas-powered sibling, the Wrangler.
The 650-horsepower Recon will start at nearly $67,000 including destination charge — around $20,000 more than a basic four-door Wrangler — and will not get the benefit of advertising the $7,500 federal tax credit on sales or leases, which expired at the end of September.
It’ll be built in Toluca, Mexico, alongside Jeep’s other EV, the Wagoneer S, and the brand’s new hybrid Cherokee. The battery will be made at Stellantis’ joint-venture factory with Samsung SDI in Kokomo, Indiana.
Aamir Ahmed, Jeep’s global head of off-road and EVs, said the brand is well aware that losing the tax credit will make it tougher to generate sales. But he said there will still be “organic demand for electrification,” particularly in states that in recent years followed California’s lead in adopting stricter emissions standards and pushing more EV purchases. These states in some cases have maintained their own EV tax incentives.
Ahmed indicated that Jeep won’t make Recons in large numbers, at least not right away.
“We’ll be very diligent and surgical in how we go to market with this vehicle and make sure that we are selling them in the right places, and we’re not trying to allocate to our dealers in a way that we flood the market,” Ahmed said.
Stellantis has largely pulled away from the EV market of late, slashing production of other electric offerings as it anticipated the EV sales slowdown, and canceling planned models like an electric Ram full-size pickup and Jeep plug-in hybrid pickup.
But Jeep has hyped the Recon for a while — long before the EV industry was in free fall under President Donald Trump — and is pushing forward now because it still sees at least some demand for offroad EVs, and says this one is unique because the doors and rear windows come off.
There’s also the fact that it’s already fully developed and ready to go.
“We’ve got a great car. We’ve already built it. We should sell it, we should learn. I don’t know how many it will be. I’m not really that worried about it,” Jeep CEO Bob Broderdorf recently told MotorTrend.
The Recon sits on the flexible STLA Large platform, which would allow it to potentially offer hybrid or gas-powered options in the future; Jeep broached that possibility with dealers earlier this year. For now, though, executives won’t say if they have concrete plans for additional powertrains beyond the battery version, only that this platform provides “multi-energy” flexibility.
Production is expected to start early next year, with deliveries shortly afterward. It will initially launch in the United States and Canada, with more countries to be added later.
Jeep says the Recon will have a range of up to 250 miles — around 50 miles less than its sleeker sibling, the Wagoneer S — and will sprint 0-60 mph in as low as 3.6 seconds. It has five drive modes, including Auto, Sport, Snow, Sand and Rock, and a throttle pedal that the brand’s engineers promise offers the right dose of controlled torque for satisfying off-roading.
Brian Del Pup, the engineering lead for Recon, says he and other Jeep employees did lots of off-roading in Michigan and across the West during the Recon’s testing phase. The EV has a different feel rolling through rocky terrain than a Wrangler, he said, especially in the pedals.
In a recent round of final tests in the red rock desert of Moab, Utah, earlier this month, he said the Recon checked many tough trails off its list, with names like Poison Spider, Hell’s Revenge and Seven Mile Rim. (A Moab trim of the SUV will debut first and includes the Rock drive mode.)
“It’s an off-road vehicle, and it really exceeded our expectations last week on the trail,” Del Pup said. “So we’re pretty proud of it, from an off-road capability perspective.”
lramseth@detroitnews.com
@lramseth
