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A bunch of Jeep Wrangler 4xe owners started their week off with a rather cruel surprise when what seemed like a routine, over-the-air software update ended up rendering a vast swath of those vehicles essentially inoperable. According to a tipster who contacted us directly, the update scrambled her 4xe’s digital brain so badly that she was unable to coax the car out of her immediate neighborhood without losing drive power:
“Over the weekend Jeep pushed an over the air update to wrangler 4xe models that had a major bug in it,” said our tipster, Erica. “Those who got the update had power terrain issues where their cars wouldn’t start or would lose all power mid drive (I lost power and my car shut off in the middle of the street 5x in a 2 block radius today in Aurora).”
“Jeep did not inform their customers of this and created a major safety concern that could have had incredibly dangerous outcomes,” Erica said. “My car had to be towed to the dealership and they have been giving me the runaround despite confirming the bug.”
The Drive
According to this 4xeforums.com post from “Jeep Cares” (the company’s support and outreach team), the software update was meant to patch the vehicle’s telematics system, and customers can safely defer it indefinitely rather than allowing it to proceed. However, a second update has now been pushed that reportedly reverts the software to the previous version, and Jeep Cares cautioned that customers will not be able to tell which version they currently have by looking at Uconnect, because the problematic package doesn’t make any changes to the infotainment suite itself, meaning the version numbers will appear the same.
According to active forum and social media threads, there are still many owners who remain without their cars entirely, having towed them to dealerships for a fix.
So, if you’re a Wrangler 4xe owner, here’s your order of operations for the time being:
- If you have applied the wonky update and your vehicle is misbehaving, you should try driving without the hybrid or electric-only drive modes enabled. If/when you receive notice of a new update, accept it. This should revert the software to the previous version.
- If you haven’t applied the bad patch—or you’re uncertain but your car is working fine—do nothing, and defer any software updates until further notice.
We’ve reached out to Jeep for insights and we hope to hear back. Stay tuned.
Got a tip? Are you without your 4xe? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com.
Byron is an editor at The Drive with a keen eye for infrastructure, sales and regulatory stories.
