Electric cars were in the news earlier in the year when extreme cold temperatures in the Chicago area caused traffic jams at public charging stations as owners lined up to charge their vehicles. Cold weather can seriously impact electric-vehicle range — one study put the loss at around 40% — which is why a plug-in hybrid that has modest all-electric range for local driving and a gas engine for longer trips appeals to some car buyers.
This is the type of powertrain that’s in our long-term 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe Trailhawk, and we were curious what kind of EV range loss it experiences in colder temperatures. The 2023 Grand Cherokee 4xe has an EPA-estimated 26 miles of all-electric range, so we fully charged its 17.3-kilowatt-hour battery pack, then drove the Jeep until the battery was fully depleted and the powertrain switched from Electric to gas-electric Hybrid mode. Here’s what we found.
Charging Time and Predicted Range
Starting with a fully depleted battery pack, it took around two and a half hours to fully charge the battery on a Level 2 home charging system operating at 30 amperes. The Jeep’s instrument panel showed 27 miles of all-electric range at the end of the charging session, which added 15.2 kWh of energy based on data from the charger.
Temperatures were in the 40s Fahrenheit during our test (it’s been an impressively mild February in the Chicago region following a brief January cold spell), and it was interesting to note that the charging time was slightly quicker than when we had previously tracked charging at the same home charging station in warmer summer weather. In both instances, around 15 kWh of energy was added to the battery, but while the Jeep displayed 27 miles of all-electric range for this test, our previous summer test resulted in 29 miles of electric range.
We charged the Jeep the day before our planned range test, but we noticed that its battery had dipped to 97% after sitting overnight, so we topped it up before heading out. The Jeep’s Electric mode also wasn’t initially available at the beginning of our trip, which was relayed by an instrument cluster message, but it was available soon after. We hadn’t set a climate schedule for vehicle preconditioning, so we started the drive in a cold Jeep and set the climate control to automatic at a temperature of around 70 degrees, just as we normally would.
Real-World Cold-Weather Range
While the Jeep had 27 miles of all-electric range at the beginning of our drive, it was fully depleted 21.9 miles later, at which point the Jeep switched from Electric to Hybrid mode. Our drive route was a blend of suburban streets and higher-speed interstate driving, and other than using the Jeep’s Max Regen setting, which helps recuperate more energy when coasting, we drove the Jeep as we would any other test vehicle.
While we weren’t able to travel as far as the Grand Cherokee 4xe’s 26-mile EPA estimate, we’re interested to see if we can get closer to it when the weather warms up.
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