In today’s Jeep livestream, Jeep announced a plug-in electric Jeep Wrangler will join the lineup in 2020. As you may have seen on one of our previous blog posts, an electric Jeep Wrangler recently completed the Rubicon trail with generator fill-ups at night of course. My guess is they think battery technology and range will be at a level in 2020 that the average person will feel comfortable going off-road, and getting stuck, to drive an electric Jeep. That or they have segmented their audience to know there are a lot of people who just commute in a Jeep and like the way it looks. Either way I love this idea. It would be great to have the low-end torque of an electric motor and not gas out mother nature as we crawl across her.

An electric Jeep Wrangler completed the Rubicon Trail this year at the annual Jeep Jamboree. The electric Jeep was built by a South Korean firm and shipped over on a boat in time for the annual Jeep Jamboree gathering. It packed an onboard gasoline generator to recharge the batteries at night, but it completed the course on batteries only, making it the first EV to ever complete the famous Rubicon Trail. I’ve often though the low-end torque from an EV would be great in a Wrangler, and personally I wouldn’t want to drive a fully-built one multiple hours on a highway anyways so maybe Jeep can get this going into production some day. Check out the video – it’s got some funny bits and some great crawling action. Congrats to the South Korean team who put this Jeep build together! We look forward to seeing more videos soon.