Mysterious Utah Monolith Repurposed to Charge Jeep Wrangler 4xe

If you had access to the internet for even an hour over the last month, you would have come across the “monolith”, a 12ft tall slab of metal that first appeared in a remote area of Utah, USA. The object is shaped like a triangular prism and was placed in a sandstone slot canyon. If you have watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, then you would see this chunk of metal resembles the Monolith in the movie. As of now, nobody has come up or indicated why it was constructed and left there. The same is true for the two “copycat” monoliths that popped up in Romania and California. All three have been removed since, with the Utah one removed by people who took the “leave no trace” motto quite literally. Luckily though, unlike the monolith removers, Jeep saw the humour in it.

The Jeep Wrangler is a rugged and true-blue 4x4, so the idea of using the Monolith as a charging station for its new Wrangler 4xe hybrid is smart marketing. With the power of Photoshop, they edited their vehicle next to a monolith photo and added extra equipment to make the metal chunk into a powerful, alien charging pedestal, emblazoned with the Jeep logo. The plugin hybrid will never charge in the middle of nowhere in reality, but one can dream. As Jeep says, “truly out of this world”.

Coming to the burly 4x4 that is the Jeep Wrangler 4xe, it will be powered by a 2-litre 4-cylinder turbo petrol and two electric motors that are powered by a 17 kWh lithium-ion battery. The power unit makes a combined total of 381 PS and 637 Nm of peak power and torque. On the electric motors alone, it can travel up to 40 kms while the combined hybrid range is a claimed 640 kms. Acceleration is alarmingly fast for a Jeep with 0-100 kmph done in 6.5 seconds. To keep the batteries cool, it shares the refrigerant from the air-conditioning system. 

The Wrangler 4xe will be available in 3 different variants -- entry-level 4xe, mid-spec Sahara, and the fully-loaded Rubicon. It will come with three driving modes – electric, hybrid, and e-save. Electric mode does what it says and the vehicle will run solely on battery power. During e-save mode the Wrangler 4xe will run on petrol power alone to save the battery and in hybrid mode, it will use both powertrains to travel. The car is also fitted with a “Max Regen” feature which will further optimise electric energy regeneration.