Jeep Renegade review

It’s a largely successful interior update, even if things can feel a bit cheap outside of those glitzy changes. The interior is still slightly basic-looking, though. 

There are built-in software app screens that allow you to manage the car’s charging preferences and to keep track of what it’s doing in its various off-roading modes; and if you download the UConnect app to your smartphone, you can connect to the car remotely to check its condition and prepare it for departure.

That lateral body control imposes a natural speed limit on your cornering, although it needn’t necessarily be considered a restrictive one; and the primary ride can become a little tiresome on long motorway journeys, when the car’s body seldom settles for long, and on choppy B-road surfaces.

If you like the cut of this car’s jib, though – and this is quite an easy car to like – you’ll simply adapt to the Renegade’s way of doing things. However, it’s not like so many modern Land Rovers, whose off-road capabilities seem to come at little or no cost to on-road refinement or drivability.

The lightness and elasticity of the steering was a bigger bugbear for most testers than any of its other dynamic transgressions, because it makes the Renegade less intuitive to place than it need be. 

The car’s grip level may be only moderate during harder cornering, but its stability isn’t in question, the tyres and electronic stability controls neatly preventing you from putting the sort of lateral load into the chassis that would test its roll control to breaking point.

The way the electric rear axle keeps the chassis on line when you’re gently goading it through a corner, meanwhile, is quietly impressive – even if that clunky auto ’box can still cause waves of steering corruption when it decides to engage drive at the front axle as you exit a bend.

Comfort and isolation

Electric motors may not be noisy things, but boxy Jeeps with upright windscreens, big door mirrors and chunky tyres tend to be. Suffice to say, the Renegade doesn’t exactly sail along serenely even when its combustion engine is shut down. (It certainly doesn’t when it’s running.)

Our road test noise measurements were taken with the car in Hybrid mode and the petrol engine shut down at both 30mph and 50mph, and yet, at 50mph, plenty of petrol-engined family hatches we’ve tested recently run more quietly. T

he wing mirrors generate plenty of flutter and the door seals aren’t brilliant at shutting out the rush of the air.

There’s generous headroom in both rows of seats, although the front ones don’t have particularly supportive or adjustable cushions. Outright leg room is only average up front, while a lack of telescoping reach adjustment on the steering column will make the car less comfortable than bigger off- roaders for longer-legged drivers.

What's the Jeep Renegade like off-road?

In Trailhawk form, the Renegade offers plenty of off-road capability, although not so much that you couldn’t beat it with the right second- hand Land Rover or Toyota. The car’s near-30deg approach and departure angles are its best assets off road.

It actually has a lesser wading depth and only 5% more ground clearance than a Toyota RAV4 PHEV. Braked trailer towing capacity, at 1150kg, is also a little disappointing. The Renegade is designed to tolerate the odd light underbody grounding contact, but you’ll be surprised at the slopes and hollows it will tackle without grounding out.

The standard M+S tyres make for plenty of grip on mud, dirt and grass, and low-speed controllability is good in the more serious off-road driving modes, which desensitise the accelerator pedal usefully. The slightly spongy-feeling brake pedal can be a frustration both off the road and on it, though.

Plenty of PHEV SUVs are pricier still, of course. And yet the Renegade 4xe doesn’t quite have the electric range it would need to squeeze into an 11% benefit-in-kind company car tax classification and to reach out as an outstanding fleet option, either.

As it is, the 14% bracketing of our test car still ought to appeal to plenty. But it does seem odd that Jeep isn’t offering a cheaper, sub-50g/km, road-tyred, mid-spec version of the Renegade 4xe that might bring its 237bhp hybrid powertrain to a wider fleet audience.

Electric range for the car proved to average around 21 miles on test – the kind of showing that we were used to from PHEVs five or 10 years ago but now looks a bit tokenistic and might be unlikely to drive down your monthly fuel budget too far.

Disappointing real-world fuel economy when the car is running on a depleted battery won’t do much to help there, either. You’ll do well to breach the 40mpg barrier on a long motorway cruise.