Jeep Avenger 2023 Review

Last updated on October 4th, 2023 at 05:32 pm

Intro, Price, Options and Verdict

Introduction

In some markets, “Avenger” has historical connotations, such as the Hillman Avenger of 1970s UK infamy. Most people are more likely to make a Marvel movie association, which is probably what Jeep was going for. However, despite the play towards a superhero image, the Jeep Avenger is more of a family runabout than an indestructible crimefighter, even if it does have some offroad capabilities. While it looks like a Jeep, it's likely to spend most of its life on tarmacked roads. This is Jeep’s first all all-electric car towards a 100% electric future by 2030, and we got to spend some time with it at the UK launch.

Price and Options

The first versions of the Jeep Avenger to hit the UK market are front-wheel-drive cars with 156hp and a 54kWh battery, although there is an all-wheel drive 4xe version planned. This car uses a significantly adapted version of Stellantis's E-CMP2 platform, which is an evolution of the E-CMP used in vehicles like the Vauxhall Corsa-e and Peugeot e-208. So this is a platform that was intended from the start to accommodate internal combustion engines as well as EVs.

There will initially be three trim levels called Longitude, Altitude, and Summit, all clearly inspired by the outdoors image of the Jeep brand. Even the base model has a 10.25in infotainment screen, plenty of safety tech that we will talk about in a later section, and 16in wheels. The Altitude upgrades to 17in wheels and adds adaptive cruise control. Summit gets you 18in wheels, alongside LED headlights, taillights, and fog lamps plus automatically folding door mirrors with puddle lights. The rear parking camera comes with front, rear, and side sensors on the Summit trim.

This was the version we drove, in the signature metallic yellow. Metallic paints cost £700 and bi-colour versions £1,100. The Jeep Avenger has the usual problem with electric cars – it’s not cheap. Even the base Jeep Avenger costs close to £36,000, then Altitude is £37,400 and Summit close to £40,000. Then of course there are quite a few option packs and upgrades you can add, although the Summit has most of these as standard. But you may be willing to pay the price for the “Jeep-ness”.

Design, Comfort and Storage

Exterior Design

The Avenger does look the part for a Jeep. It's got the classic Jeep front grille harking back to the Willys and TJ Wrangler, and a tail-light design that is meant to evoke the memory of petrol cannisters, although this is a bit of a paradox for a car that runs on electricity.

There are plastic guards around the wheels and along the bottom of the doors to protect the bodywork. These are allegedly made of a kind of plastic that is coloured throughout rather than painted. This means that if they are scratched or scuffed, the same colour will show through, and the damage will be less noticeable. It might be something that was initially meant for when you’re scraping through bushes but will be even more valuable in cramped urban environments.

While the Avenger has strong echoes of the Jeep Renegade, and is even reminiscent of a Dacia Sandero, the company has done a good job of smoothing out this car’s lines. The general consensus among people we asked is that it’s a good-looking car, with the right blend of modernisation and Jeep motif heritage. It also looks like it can handle rough terrain, as you’d hope for this brand.

Interior Comfort

This does feel like an interior that is meant to survive a few knocks, with a general sense that the doors on the cubbies and buttons are robust. The front seats are comfy and covered in material that looks like it would survive spillage. However, the front seats are mechanically adjusted, even with the top Summit trim, although the latter does have heated front seats. There does appear to be a £1,100 powered seat option, but our test car didn’t have this.

The trim uses a lot of plastic that is colour-matched with the exterior, but this feels of high quality and is part of what gives the Avenger its sense of durability. The 10.25in infotainment screen sits separately from the dashboard, and there are plenty of physical buttons, which again feel solid and built to last.

There is lots of storage inside, with 34 litres of capacity in the various cubbies and door panels. This is more than twice as much as is found in most cars. The central cubby has movable cupholder divides so you can accommodate a variety of vessel sizes, and the front section can hold a 1.5 litre bottle. However, this is also where the wireless phone charger included with the Summit trim resides.

The front feels quite spacious, but the rear is more cramped. The headroom is excellent, but kneeroom is much more limited. The middle seat is wide enough for an adult but won’t be as comfortable on longer journeys as the two outer seats. The middle seat back also doesn’t fold down to make an armrest. There is a single USB-C port for rear passengers, but no air conditioning vents. Naturally for a family-oriented vehicle, the two rear outer seats have ISOfix points for child chairs.

Although the car we drove didn’t have a sunroof, this will allegedly be an optional extra by the end of 2023. The price of £700 is reasonable, and the description implies it is made of clear glass.

Storage and Load Carrying

Jeeps are about going off the beaten track, and they’re also about taking stuff with you, like bikes, tents, and sports gear. However, the Avenger’s boot space is more hatchback than SUV. There’s a kick-operated electric door available with the Altitude trim and above, which we found was one of the more dependable implementations.

With the rear seats up, you get 355 litres of luggage space, which is about as much as a reasonably sized hatchback. When you drop the rears seats down, with a 60/40 split, this rises to 1,053. That is less than a Volkswagen ID. 3. This will be perfectly fine for supermarket shopping and family weekends away, but not so much for those trips to Ikea or longer holidays.

This car can't tow either – it's not rated for it, and you can't fit a towbar on the rear. That rather goes against the adventure image of the Avenger. On the other hand, the lip of boot is the same robust plastic as the exterior trim, so will withstand the odd scuff. You can also get a washable waterproof mat for the boot. The boot floor is relatively flat and the hatch opening wide, so stuffing a bike or two in the back should be possible (although we didn’t have one handy to try this).

In-Car Entertainment and Controls

Jeep has kept things relatively conventional for the general controls of the Avenger. There’s a button to start the system, a normal-sized steering wheel, and typical stalks. The left-hand side of the wheel sports buttons for the cruise control, while the right-hand side is for media. There’s a stalk for lights and indicators on the left, and one for windscreen wipers on the right.

Although there are some air conditioning controls available via the infotainment screen, the majority of functions can be operated using discrete buttons. You don’t really want to be messing with a touchscreen when driving on challenging terrain. There are also buttons for selecting drive, reverse, neutral and park. The drive button can be pressed again to toggle B mode for greater regeneration.

There are typical Stellantis switches for the electronic parking brake and selecting the power modes. One thing that appears to be missing is auto hold, which is a shame. You can engage the electronic parking brake at a stop light, and then it will disengage automatically when you press the accelerator again. But it’s a bit fiddlier than a proper auto hold system.

There’s a well laid out dashboard display, which is a 7in unit on the entry-level Longitude trim and a 10.25in version for the higher options. This provides useful information including turning directions when the satnav is providing a route, energy delivery and regeneration, and remaining range. There’s no Head-Up Display option.

The infotainment screen is 10.25in across all models and supports wireless Apple Car Play and Android Auto across the range too. The screen sits rather separately on top of the dashboard, which looks a bit like it was an afterthought, but Jeep says this is to make it more accessible to the front passenger. The icon-driven menu is icon driven and relatively easy to navigate, although we found it quite hard to get detailed numerical information about energy usage. There are connected services available with the Avenger, but we didn’t get access to try these out.

Performance, Running Costs, Range, and Safety

Performance and Driving

The new E-CMP2 platform includes a more powerful 156hp motor that Stellantis has developed in partnership without Japanese NIDEC. However, the Avenger still isn't a tremendously powerful EV, and it can only hit 62mph in 9.6 seconds with a 93mph top speed. During my driving testing, however, the 260Nm of instantly available torque meant that the Avenger felt faster than the figures would suggest. A-road overtaking was entirely possible in Sport mode.

Normal mode still felt adequately quick for everyday driving but Eco was too sluggish for all but those times when you really need to eke every mile out of the battery. The faster dual motor 4xe version should be even more fun to drive, but the release date of that hasn't been announced yet. The suspension setup is firmer than we expected for an urban-oriented vehicle but this car still managed a comfortable ride over potholes and rougher surfaces.

That’s reassuring, because despite only being front-wheel drive, the Avenger is still a Jeep. Incredibly, it has Sand, Mud and Snow options to help you offroad – rare on a non-all-wheel drive car. There’s even hill descent control and hill hold. It's also still designed for rugged terrain. It has a 20-degree approach angle, 20-degree breakover angle, 32-degree departure angle, and 200mm of ground clearance. We were treated to a display of the Avenger tackling some large artificial terrain humps slowly but ably (check out the video review to see this in action).

Despite having offroad ability, the Avenger will spend most of its time on roads. It has a surprisingly good turning circle, and its small size makes it very able around urban environments. It feels very comfortable doing 60mph on a British A road or 70mph on a motorway. Overall, while this is not the sportiest of Sports Utilities Vehicles, it’s more fun to drive than we expected.

Range and Charging

While the Avenger feels competent on highways, it’s not perfectly suited to longer journeys. With just a 54kWh battery, 51kWh of which is usable, it only offers 249 miles of WLTP range. That is in the sluggish Eco mode, too. While that kind of range will be adequate for the occasional intercity jaunt, the Avenger will be better suited to urban transport, commuting, and shorter family trips.

There's 100kW DC charging, meaning you can replenish from 20 to 80% in 24 minutes, so stops on long journeys won’t be too onerous. On a 7kW AC home wall box, it will take about eight hours to go from zero to full. There’s 11kW AC charging as standard, too, which reduces the full charge time to just over 5.5 hours.

We didn’t get a precise figure from the Avenger’s chart-like display of power consumption, but this was somewhere between 3 and 4 miles per kWh during our test drive, which was mostly on A-roads using all three power modes with some strong accelerating. That would equate to somewhere between 150 and 200 miles of real-world range. We would have liked to see a bit more out of a car that you might take off the beaten track.

Running Costs

The WLTP rating implies 4.9 miles per kWh, but we only managed under 4 miles per kWh. So the Avenger is merely mid-range for power economy. The warranty on the car is three years, which is typical of European vehicles, but meagre compared to what MGs or Korean vehicles offer. The battery has the typical eight-year, 100,000-mile guarantee, however. The Longitude and Altitude trims are I insurance group 24, while the Summit is in 25. These aren’t particularly high, so this won’t be too an expensive a car to insure.

Safety

There's lots of safety tech on the Avenger as standard. You get lane departure warning and automatic emergency braking, which includes pedestrian and cyclist recognition. Traffic sign recognition is also included alongside drowsy driver detection. There's even basic cruise control.

However, you need the Altitude trim to upgrade this to adaptive cruise control, and then Summit for lane centring and traffic jam assist. The lane centring isn’t quite Tesla Autosteer but will give you a nudge to keep you from drifting offtrack when cruising. Summit also gives you blind spot detection and automatic main beams.

Key Specifications