American SUV brand’s range will grow its model range with the new Recon.
Jeep will take on the Land Rover Defender with the near-440kW Jeep Recon electric off-roader as part of a big push to reinvigorate itself.
Launching in 2025 with a range of around 600km, the Recon will arrive as an unofficial electric sibling to the famed Jeep Wrangler.
Sharing underpinning with the also 2025-bound Jeep Wagoneer S, the pair – along with the already released compact Jeep Avenger – will swell the brand’s range.
This includes a fourth EV that CEO Christian Meunier has described as a look into the future of the brand. Covered teaser pictures indicate this will sit at the lower end of the lineup.
The Stellantis-owned American brand will go electric car-only in Europe in 2030.
One of the most anticipated of those new models, the Defender-challenging Recon, will, like the range-topping Wagoneer S, be based on Stellantis’s new STLA Large architecture – making them some of the first models to be so.
Although further technical details have yet to be released, a 0-100km/h time of a little over 3.5sec for both models has been confirmed.
Built in the US and released there first, the Recon will be offered and positioned as a raw take on off-road Jeeps of old, with options including removable doors and an open-top design, as on the Wrangler.
The Recon will sit alongside the Wrangler, but the two cars will have slightly different sizes and positions in the range.
“It’s a unique car, very boxy and very capable. It will sit in a lower part of the [market] segment to the Wrangler.” said Jeep’s European boss, Antonella Bruno,
The Wrangler is offered outside of Australia as a plug-in hybrid, but Bruno said it wasn’t possible to engineer the current Wrangler 4xe in right-hand drive in this generation.
“At a global level, we want to be the 4×4 leader in electrification,” said Bruno.
Additional reporting by Mark Tisshaw