Earlier this year, the 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee won our Best SUV of 2023 award, chosen from its large field of peers for its versatility, wide range of prices and features, luxurious cabins, state-of-the-art technology and legitimate go-anywhere chops. But we began to wonder … just how go-anywhere are those go-anywhere chops? Given the model we purchased for a yearlong test was the off-road-focused 4xe Trailhawk plug-in hybrid, it seemed natural to take the thing into the dirt for some proper off-roading.
Related: Why Did We Buy a 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe?
And I’m not talking just a dirt path to a campsite or a gravel driveway at the country club. I mean throwing it into a Jeep Jamboree, the kind of off-road enthusiast gathering that would test the thing to its limits, plastic bumpers and rocker panels be damned. So that’s exactly what we did — we took it to a Jeep Jamboree at the Badlands Off Road Park in Attica, Ind., where it joined around a hundred other Jeeps on the trails, quarries, cliffs, sand traps and streams of rural America. How did Jeep’s top off-road Grand Cherokee do in the rough?
What’s the Trailhawk Bring to the Party?
There’s half a dozen different trim levels of the Grand Cherokee, ranging from the more affordable lower-end Laredo up through the super-luxurious Summit Reserve, and half a dozen again of the 4xe plug-in hybrid variant. The “4xe” is Jeep-speak for the PHEV version, which replaces the standard 3.6-liter V-6 engine in the Grand Cherokee with a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine combined with an electric drive motor and a 17.3-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack. The system works with an eight-speed automatic transmission and in the Trailhawk sends power to the wheels through Jeep’s Quadra-Drive II 4×4 system with a two-speed transfer case and 2.72:1 low range, enabling a 47.4:1 crawl ratio.
You also get Selec-Terrain traction management, allowing you to select a mode that matches the Jeep’s environment (Rock, Mud/Sand, Snow, etc.) that then controls the off-road systems. The Trailhawk has 10.9 inches of maximum ground clearance, 18-inch wheels with Goodyear Wrangler Territory all-terrain tires, and special glare-resistant matte-black-and-blue hood decals. A driver-adjustable, variable-height air suspension comes with it, too. Add in some underbody reinforcements and protection for the watertight battery pack, and you’re ready to hit the trails — which we most eagerly did.
Getting to the Wilderness
The idea of buying a Grand Cherokee trim that’s capable of serious off-roading is ostensibly that you like going off-road but need something comfortable, quiet and cushy for your everyday use — otherwise, you’d likely be buying a Wrangler. But if you spend more time on-road than off, Wranglers come with compromises: They’re loud, handle poorly, wander all over the highway in a crosswind and aren’t known for their occupant comfort. Grand Cherokees, however, are known for comfort. Even this Trailhawk model, with its knobby all-terrain tires, is wonderful to drive on the street. It tracks true down the highway at speed, navigates city streets with ease and absorbs potholes with aplomb. It’s just so comfortable in nearly every aspect. There’s plenty of sound insulation to keep the cabin mostly hushed, with only the drone of the all-terrain tires coming through to disturb the cabin Zen.
The 4xe PHEV system is quite good, as well, especially when you leave it in Electric mode. That’s when the truly hushed operation shines through, and there’s still enough power to get you through traffic smartly or cruise along at highway speeds. The Grand Cherokee 4xe Trailhawk has 26 miles of all-electric range, according to EPA estimates, but you may be able to eke out more miles if you’re a cautious driver, and you’ll certainly come in under that range if you’re barreling down the highway in Electric mode. There’s also a Hybrid mode that lets the Jeep decide how to best mix the gas and electric systems, plus an eSave mode that will either maintain the battery’s current charge or run the engine continuously to recharge the battery.
Out in the Wild
Badlands Off Road Park is a great place to run through all kinds of terrain to see how the Jeep handles itself. The site of an old quarry, it features all types of off-road conditions: deep woodland trails, loose deep sand and gravel, tall rock formations for climbing, and streams for fording. It’s a mishmash of just about everything you could want. We started each day with a full charge and vowed to keep the Trailhawk in Electric mode as much as possible until the batteries ran out and we needed to use the gas engine.
In this mode, we were able to get about 9-10 miles of low-speed rock and trail crawling out of the fully charged battery before needing the four-cylinder gas engine. That’s well below the EPA-estimated electric range, but this was not typical use — in most cases, we were in an off-road mode (either Rock or Mud/Sand, depending on conditions) with low range engaged on the transfer case. This enables a lot of torque to be had at the wheels but not a lot of speed to be carried, which is what you want for rock crawling and trail riding.
To prepare for our off-road adventure, we aired down the Grand Cherokee’s tires to 25 pounds per square inch for better grip on loose and slippery surfaces. Going too much below that would risk pulling a tire off a rim in rocky terrain (not something we wanted to do), but leaving the tires at their recommended pressures is also not the best for off-roading on soft terrain. We also put the Grand Cherokee’s air suspension in the Off-Road 2 mode, bringing it to its full height for 10.9 inches of ground clearance and better scaling up and over obstacles. You need that extra height to improve the Grand Cherokee’s approach angle, but even this wasn’t enough to save the SUV’s fixed lower front bumper from some trail damage during the event. Finally, we slapped the required trail flag onto the side, put it in Electric mode and went into the park.
(Mostly) Silent Wheeling Is Awesome
For 2023, the Grand Cherokee Trailhawk is only available with the 4xe powertrain. This is, frankly, a brilliant move. The off-road community has been slow to warm up to the idea of a plug-in hybrid off-road machine (out of some 100 Wranglers at the Jeep Jamboree we attended, only one was a customer-owned 4xe), but with more Wranglers being sold with the powertrain every day, that seems likely to change soon. Putting that powertrain in the most capable off-road Grand Cherokee seems like even more of a no-brainer since it matches up well with the personality of the Grand Cherokee.
And the 4xe powertrain proved to be outstanding out in the rough. There’s nothing like the sensation of rolling in near silence through the woods with the windows down, the only noises coming from the crunch of the tires on pebbles and the chirping of birds. The way the electric powertrain operates when scaling obstacles or descending steep, loose grades is also amazing — there’s so much available torque, and all of it is easily controlled and arrives in dead silence. The 4xe powertrain is so good at going off-road, I may not want to go wheeling in anything other than an electrified vehicle going forward.
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Capable, But It Could Be More So
The Trailhawk proved to be extremely capable out in the rough, but it’s not perfect. It only has an electronic limited-slip differential in the rear, not a selectably lockable diff, so you’re relying on the traction control to detect slippage and automatically transfer torque from the wheel that slips to the wheel that grips … which didn’t always reliably occur. One obstacle in particular stymied the Grand Cherokee: When trying to scale a wet and slippery rock face up into a tunnel, the Trailhawk got its front up and over the rocks but couldn’t get traction to get its back end up — no matter how many times we tried to “bump” it over or what setting we put it in. A manually lockable rear differential would’ve almost certainly enabled it to achieve that objective.
Second, the Trailhawk did not emerge from our off-road excursion without some battle damage. The front lower bumper — that area of plastic below the Jeep’s tow hooks — took a bash from a rock somewhere along the trail and got both dented (which we likely could fix with a heat gun) and shredded (which … we cannot). It will require replacement to bring the Trailhawk back to how it was before the event, and even though the lower matte-plastic bit looks like it should be removable, my sources say the entire front end is one enormous assembly and that the whole thing will need to be replaced. If that’s the case, it’s an odd way to engineer what is supposed to be the most off-road-capable version of the Grand Cherokee. We’ll see what a dealer says, but that could be a very costly repair job for some relatively minor cosmetic damage.
Aside from those two quibbles, however, the Grand Cherokee 4xe Trailhawk proved to be an amazing off-roader, providing exceptional comfort for driver and passengers (ventilated seats are a godsend when it’s 95 degrees and dusty as hell outside), surprising capability in the wilderness and a unique experience when using its Electric mode. Can it go toe to toe with a Wrangler Rubicon? Absolutely not; just about every aspect of a Wrangler is designed to put off-road capability first and on-road comfort second. The Grand Cherokee 4xe Trailhawk reverses that order, giving you a comfortable, luxurious on-road SUV first and a highly capable off-road machine second.
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