Jeep brand turnaround plan announced by Stellantis CEO

[WestwallNF104A]

Except the consumer does want the 4xe. That's why they sold 60,000 of them in a year. Saying the average Wrangler won't see so much as a dirt road is an understatement. There's a reason they have as much equipment as any other SUV now - it's because off-roaders are the extreme minority buyer for what is now a lifestyle vehicle.

Electric is the future and gas engines will ultimately disappear. I for one am 100% for it if they can get around the battery capacity/charging issue. An electric 4-motor SUV is the perfect off-road design.

I think you are ignoring the rather large elephant in the room which is to get all those EV's their power we need to start building power plants like mad.

California has had to tell EV owners to not charge their vehicles during heat waves because the grid can't handle the drain.

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[Tommyd]

Except the consumer does want the 4xe. That's why they sold 60,000 of them in a year. Saying the average Wrangler won't see so much as a dirt road is an understatement. There's a reason they have as much equipment as any other SUV now - it's because off-roaders are the extreme minority buyer for what is now a lifestyle vehicle.

Electric is the future and gas engines will ultimately disappear. I for one am 100% for it if they can get around the battery capacity/charging issue. An electric 4-motor SUV is the perfect off-road design.

Electric is so far away. So far. According to all the car podcasts I listen too. From people that know cars like Motoman. Hybrids are the future. The infrastructure for evs is horrible.

 

[Volt0]

If you think about it from a CEO perspective, it could have been the perfect market to try to discover the price cap that the market would pay, as well as an opportunity to lean into inflation pressures ( which was known before COVID ). A lot of vehicle manufacturers made similar moves ( although maybe not as aggressive ). Maybe Jeep was trying to catch up, who knows? Either way, if that's the move that I was going to try to make, I would definitely try to sell my brand as a luxury brand ( following queues from Toyota's Lexus line : "luxury exports to the us").

Make no mistake about it, these ppl are super smart, and they are absolutely positioning/repositioning for the best possible outcome, over the next 5 to 10yrs. For me, the real question is this : why aren't shareholders demanding that more of those profits get routed to them, rather than the c-suite execs?

 

[keithcroshaw]

Here in Australia at least, recently there's been a $20k price drop on some models.

My 2022 Gladiator is now worth $20k less and that means my car loan repayment is way out of whack in that my insured market value in the event of a writeoff is such that im out of pocket the difference by $20k.

Yea I'm pretty sure if I got totaled in an accident we'd have to switch to a single car family for a year or so...
Or I'd be driving a used Ford Fiesta for a year or so...

 

[AleYeah]

Unless the brand turnaround includes a price turnaround, I reckon a JT just ain't in the cards for me. My current tentative plan is to roll the dice about how long my JK will last- I'm closing in on 120k miles- and buy a low mileage used full size truck in the $30s in the new year.

 

[Rubicon Runnin' Bob]

This is a forum for Jeep enthusiasts though and we are not normal. The average consumer sees a pretty car and the performance of electric and they're sold. If you removed the barriers that are quickly falling, the average person would choose electric without a second thought.

I don't know where you are in PA but in cities and suburbs, I see electric vehicles everywhere. Rural adoption will always be slower but the reality is that the majority of people in the US are near big cities so people further out will have a skewed perspectives on adoption.

Even a fast turnover design is a decade-plus affair from concept to end of manufacture. Manufacturers are focusing on electric now not because it's the current thing, but because the momentum of the current exponential growth is only going to increase in the next 5+ years when a new design now is still current.

I live in the Philly burbs

Seems the "facts" don't agree with you

46% of U.S. electric car owners want to switch back to gas-powered cars: McKinsey survey - Washington Times

Study: Most Electric Car Buyers Don't Go Back - Kelley Blue Book (kbb.com)

 

[BlackRuby23]

Make no mistake about it, these ppl are super smart, and they are absolutely positioning/repositioning for the best possible outcome, over the next 5 to 10yrs.

No, not smart, greedy. Raising prices far beyond what your customer can afford and ending up with an inventory glut for the ages, shutting down production, and subsequently announcing a "comeback plan" is not smart.

 

[LostWoods]

Electric is so far away. So far. According to all the car podcasts I listen too. From people that know cars like Motoman. Hybrids are the future. The infrastructure for evs is horrible.

Hybrids are still electric. This entire chain started with a comment about a diesel gladiator and I'm arguing that companies simply aren't going that way. It will be more common to see the Toyota approach of adding hybrid supplementation to a 4-cylinder and the many PHEV options popping up in the short term while the infrastructure builds out. Hybrids are likely to stick around because rural areas won't have the infrastructure like cities and suburbs but PHEV and BEV will dominate where there is density.

People in this thread acting like issues in 2024 mean they're not going to be better in 2034. 5 years ago you basically had Tesla - now every manufacturer in the US sells a PHEV or BEV. The cycle for the average car isn't short...they're already deep in development for cars to be released 2-3 years from now and that will still be selling in over a decade or more. Nobody is going to invest in porwertrains that the government is pushing to outright ban in many places.

 

[LostWoods]

I think you are ignoring the rather large elephant in the room which is to get all those EV's their power we need to start building power plants like mad.

California has had to tell EV owners to not charge their vehicles during heat waves because the grid can't handle the drain.

I'd argue this is the biggest and most hilarious barrier at the moment because while you can smash out charging stations fairly rapidly, power can be a decade or more. The sheer irony of it being that electric vehicles are largely better for the environment but the tree-huggers don't want anything that isn't renewable and it flat out isn't up to the task without blanketing the Mojave desert with panels.

 

[WestwallNF104A]

Hybrids are still electric. This entire chain started with a comment about a diesel gladiator and I'm arguing that companies simply aren't going that way. It will be more common to see the Toyota approach of adding hybrid supplementation to a 4-cylinder and the many PHEV options popping up in the short term while the infrastructure builds out. Hybrids are likely to stick around because rural areas won't have the infrastructure like cities and suburbs but PHEV and BEV will dominate where there is density.

People in this thread acting like issues in 2024 mean they're not going to be better in 2034. 5 years ago you basically had Tesla - now every manufacturer in the US sells a PHEV or BEV. The cycle for the average car isn't short...they're already deep in development for cars to be released 2-3 years from now and that will still be selling in over a decade or more. Nobody is going to invest in porwertrains that the government is pushing to outright ban in many places.

You are still ignoring that rather large elephant. We need to start building powerplants, yesterday, to even begin to meet the demand that EV's will place on the grid.

You are dreaming if you think 10 years from now the situation is going to be different.

As we have seen with the billions of dollars "spent" to install under 10 charging stations. The government is hopeless when it comes to EV infrastructure.

No my friend. Hybrids are definitely the future. Of that there is little doubt.

 

[WestwallNF104A]

I'd argue this is the biggest and most hilarious barrier at the moment because while you can smash out charging stations fairly rapidly, power can be a decade or more. The sheer irony of it being that electric vehicles are largely better for the environment but the tree-huggers don't want anything that isn't renewable and it flat out isn't up to the task without blanketing the Mojave desert with panels.

Who says EV's are better for the environment? They produce more toxic waste to produce than any internal combustion vehicle.

 

[Volt0]

No, not smart, greedy. Raising prices far beyond what your customer can afford and ending up with an inventory glut for the ages, shutting down production, and subsequently announcing a "comeback plan" is not smart.

Oh, I totally agree about the greed statement. If you look at Japan, they’ve had 100yr home mortgages for a long, long time. The more out of reach, the more can be collected via interest payments.

if an auto manufacturer did reduce prices, that would poison pill any dealers holding inventory on their lot, so that’s not really an option for them.

now, serious question here, how do you see this playing out, with rising safety requirements, rising pressures to sell more EVs than what ppl want ( based on charging stations alone ), rising production costs, etc. My take : companies will need to collect revenues by the truckloads just to make the conversions over to EV, it’ll become a tougher market, and the auto manufacturers will push back against regulatory pressures (globally) that they see as no sustainable. As a publicly held company, they are legally bound to do whatever is in the best interest of the shareholders. So, who owns the largest portion of shares, and what do they want?

let me ask from another angle: who stands to gain the most from what you see?

 

[Volt0]

Who says EV's are better for the environment? They produce more toxic waste to produce than any internal combustion vehicle.

This seems to be overlooked a lot, which easily points to a bigger/stronger driving force. It’s also very clear that our version of EVs doesn’t scale to other markets ( like airplanes, trains, heavy equipment, ..).

Talk with any EE, and they laugh at EV, in terms of build costs, and in terms of the inefficiencies of energy loss from movement from one form of energy to another. Batteries don’t last forever either. For a petroleum based system, even with all of the losses from the joules of energy in liquid gas form through to forces imposed on the tire, it’s still the least lossy system that we have.

 

[LostWoods]

Who says EV's are better for the environment? They produce more toxic waste to produce than any internal combustion vehicle.

LFP flipped that script and adoption is growing. They are still more intensive to produce but over a typical lifetime they have a much lower environmental impact.

But I'm done talking about this when it's clear we're all arguing different things. Nobody's mind will be changed.

 

[WestwallNF104A]

This seems to be overlooked a lot, which easily points to a bigger/stronger driving force. It’s also very clear that our version of EVs doesn’t scale to other markets ( like airplanes, trains, heavy equipment, ..).

Talk with any EE, and they laugh at EV, in terms of build costs, and in terms of the inefficiencies of energy loss from movement from one form of energy to another. Batteries don’t last forever either. For a petroleum based system, even with all of the losses from the joules of energy in liquid gas form through to forces imposed on the tire, it’s still the least lossy system that we have.

The biggest problem batteries have is lack of energy density. I love my solar system on my truck. But it was expensive as hell.

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