The 2018 Jeep Wrangler JL is not the inline-six-powered, aerodynamic brick it was in years past. For the current generation model — now the only Wrangler built in Toledo — Jeep’s Jeepiest Jeep saw a host of improvements designed to lighten its curb weight, reduce aerodynamic drag, and cover more ground on a gallon of gas.
The model launched with only the 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 under its hood, aided in its fuel-sipping mission by standard stop/start and an eight-speed automatic transmission. Depending on the model and tranny, combined fuel economy rose 2 mpg between the old JK and newer JL models, and highway mileage rose as much as 4 mpg.
Finally, we now have EPA figures for the turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder Wrangler.
(H/T to Bozi Tatarevic for spotting the new listing.)
Generating 270 horsepower and 295 lb-ft of torque, the Wrangler’s new four-cylinder mates with a 48-volt battery and mild hybrid system for additional MPG gains. It’s only available with the eight-speed automatic. With a belt-starter generator supplementing the vehicle’s low-RPM torque and controlling its stop/start functionality, the four-banger Wrangler’s biggest fuel economy gains are found in city driving.
The EPA rates the two-door 2.0-liter model at 23 mpg city, 25 mpg highway, and 24 mpg combined. For four-door Unlimited models, fuel economy drops to 22 city/24 highway/22 combined.
Compared to the four-cylinder, V6-powered JL automatic models return 20 mpg combined, 18 mpg city, and 23 mpg highway. Only the six-speed manual version of the two-door V6 Wrangler matches the two-door four-cylinder’s highway fuel economy.
Put another way, the new four-cylinder model tops the recently departed Wrangler JK (with five-speed automatic) by 4 mpg on the combined and highway cycles. Great news, what with fuel prices rising in the U.S. and spiking in Canada, eh? Hold your horses. Adding this engine to your stable warrants an additional $1,000 outlay, or an extra $3,000 if you were considering a manual V6 model. Also, it drinks premium, unlike the Pentastar.
Apparently, you can care about the environment or your wallet, but not both.
For fun, let’s look back 30 years to see what a Wrangler drank at the end of the Reagan era. With an AMC-derived inline-six displacing 4.2 liters under the hood and a three-speed TorqueFlight automatic managing the power, a top-end 1988 Wrangler returned 14 mpg combined. Even on the highway, the EPA found it couldn’t exceed 15 mpg. Bricks aren’t svelte.
With the 2.0-liter Wrangler’s fuel economy now listed by the EPA, it shouldn’t be too long before they begin showing up at dealers.
[Image: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles]
I don’t like the idea of using a beefed up alternator as an assist motor. Either takes an expensive accessory belt, or a lot of prematurely worn regular accessory belts to transmit that extra power.
That specific belt is very probably an easy swap for any backyard mechanic. And I’ll bet on it having gear lugs in it to prevent slipping. Personally I’m not a fan of stop-start technology but that little engine in itself is 50% more powerful than the V6 in my ’08 JKU with a rated highway mpg 5 miles greater to boot. If I could regularly achieve 25 highway mpg, this one should achieve an easy 29, factory stock. It’s all in how you drive it.
“That specific belt is very probably an easy swap for any backyard mechanic.”
Almost everything that goes wrong with cars is an easy swap for any mechanic, and this being the internet all of us either are one or know one who’ll drop everything and work on our car all afternoon for lunch money.
People off of the internet, on the other hand, are in for $100 for the tow, another $100 to get it up on the lift, $100 an hour from there, and a rental car to get to work in the meantime besides.
Before the Internet, and before cars got so complex and computer-driven, people used to do their own work on their cars to save time and money. I’m one of those people. I still do the common stuff but there are some things that are just easier to let the “pros” do it.
Vulpine, each new car I’ve owned has become easier to work on than the old car it replaced. Electronically controlled fuel injection and timing adjusts itself and just works for the life of the car while carburetors and mechanical timing adjustment required extra fussing and cussing. Serpentine belts are easier to deal with than a bunch of separate V belts. Disk brake pads are much easier to replace than drum brake shoes. It’s much easier to replace spark plugs on the top of the heads of a OHC engine than on the side of a push rod engine. If you have an OBDII code reader and an internet forum for your model of car, you can accomplish a lot of troubleshooting before you get your hands dirty. When actual electronic modules quit working, it’s always been corrosion on a connector or an obvious broken solder joint, not an electronic component that failed. My old cars used to rust out. The paint oxidizes and peels off my newer cars, but I haven’t seen car body cancer in decades. The used oil from my first car used to smell of gasoline after 3000 miles. The used oil from my newer cars doesn’t smell bad after twice as many miles. Old cars used to be significantly worn out at 100k miles. Today I wouldn’t hesitate to drive across the country in an average car with 100k miles.
That’s fine, until the electronics fail. That’s where I come in. Usually all you need to do is re-solder all the components on the boards due to “cold solder joints” broken by the extreme heating and cooling of operating summer and winter, even when the car is garaged. However, those different ECM, BCM, etc. boards tend to be mounted in inaccessible locations unless you want to take the car half apart to reach them.
@ Dan: True. Popular Mechanics used to run Reader Surveys on new cars for a couple of decades.
The % of people who fixed their own cars was in the low single digits.
Check Google Books for PM issues and see for yourselves if anyone wants to verify.
And the cars were much simpler then.
I imagine that % is even lower today.
I was a Popular Science reader, not a PM reader. They didn’t poll me.
I regularly go elbows-deep in my cars for fun, experience, and saving money. I’m the only one who works on my cars unless something goes catastrophically wrong, but I still don’t like the thought of power transmission around the pulleys and bearings of things like the water pump, belt tensioner, etc. I know the belt is normally driven by the crank, but the power isn’t normally transmitted from an accessory on the belt down to the crank and to the wheels.
Keeping a spare belt and tensioner tool in the Jeep wouldn’t be hard, but annoying.
Are you so sure this starter/generator will be on the serpentine belt?
I have some sympathy for your view. I just replaced the belt that goes from the engine to the hydrostatic transmission on my John Deere 345 garden tractor. It cost roughly as much as a car tire (90 bucks). Now I could buy a Chinese aftermarket one for 30, but since you have to pretty much disassemble the whole machine to change it, I went for the OEM.
Whatever they gotta do to keep the Wrangler viable on the fuel economy front, I guess. I’m assumming the 2.0 will be purchased primarily by those whose off-pavement excursions extend no further than parking upon an inch of wind-blown sand at Zuma Beach. But they’re offering it on the Rubicon as well. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the real world.
Yeah.
I recently met a self-proclaimed Jeep fan (you know, the “outdoorsy” types that do yoga and shop at whole foods) that are walking bags of contradiction
“Why are modern Jeeps becoming so complicated and so expensive?”
“How dare Trump try to lower MPG targets?”
Me: “…”
Oh Steph, it’s TorqueFlite, not TorqueFlight.
One additional benefit to the four? Engine bay room. I was examining the new 3.6 hood area at my local show this year, and I would dread working on this thing. I sure couldn’t say that about my 89 and 04 versions, in which you could store persons of small stature next to the block with the hood down.
I vote against the belt-driven starter, too. What’s the belt life going to be with the stop-start system, especially if the tensioner starts getting loose? Do they even have a flex plate with a ring gear, and provision for mounting a conventional starter?
24mpg combined is pretty good for a Wrangler. It’s also about 40% below CAFE requirements for the two-door’s footprint.
The best part though is that FCA expects buyers to pay extra to help shareholders reduce CAFE penalties.
Screw this hybrid crap. Give the Wrangler what it REALLY needs which is at minimum the 345 Hemi. You want to eke out a couple mpgs or virtue signal how much you hug trees? Go to Toyota and buy a prius so we can all point and laugh.
What it needs and what you want are two completely different things. People have always dropped aftermarket power into them… because they wanted it, not because they needed it. Heck, 150 horses is good enough for over 90% of what the Wrangler does, going up to 300 horses just means it does it faster.
It’s been a long time since I’ve ridden in a Jeep-but thinking of that experience, 250 miles of interstate, still makes my back ache.
It’s a Jeep thing-I still don’t understand.
If it’s been a long time since you’ve ridden in a Jeep, then it’s been too long. The JKU (and I expect the JLU) are remarkably good riding, considering they’re still classed as a truck. The two-door version is probably decent as well, though the shorter wheelbase probably makes it a bit choppier where you get onto those freeways with tar-bead seams every 20-40 feet.
Wow- both have pretty phenonomal MPG for a Jeep. My 2002 TJ with a manual and stroked out 4.6L will eke out 16 mpg if I’m careful, but I get more like 13 with some off-roading thrown in. That’s with a 4″ lift, a winch and 33’s.
Looks like the 4-cyl gets about 15% better mpg, but on fuel that’s about 15% more expensive. The economics don’t really work out to check the $1000 option box. The only real advantages are that it should be a little lighter, have longer range (I’d certainly appreciate that!) and have MORE power at elevations over 1500′ or so.
A Turbocharged 4 cyl mild hybrid Wrangler. I just can’t begin to say how many levels of wrong that sounds like. Kind of like a lifted 4WD Prius… Who in the hell are they expecting to sell that to?
Someone seems to have forgotten that at one time they ALL ran on inline 4s.
No. It’s the turbocharged mild hybrid part.
Turbocharged certainly adds more power, but then, the Jeep itself is much, much heavier than when they all ran on inline 4s, too. Double to triple their old weight.
Heck, this turbo 4 even puts out more power than my JKU V6 did when new… by about 75 horses or so.
I want to hear your opinion on the upcoming Mustang hybrid.
Honest question, what’s the low end torque like with the 4 pot Wrangler? I understand that for a lot of off-road applications, the torque of an electric motor could be helpful.
Am now going to sit back with my bag of popcorn!!! :-)
Here’s the HP/torque info for the alfa romeo giulia 2.0T which is a slightly more tuned version of the same engine without the battery assist. Low end torque is not bad. I wonder how much the battery assists below 1500 rpm.
http://www.automobile-catalog.com/curve/2018/2455355/alfa_romeo_giulia_2_0_turbo.html
23 MPG in the city? I’m supposed to be impressed with that? There were multiple 6 cylinder powered cars in the NINETEEN FREAKING FIFTIES that got 23 mpg. With all the new tech we have gained in the last 60 years, 23 mpg city is not anything close to impressive. My daily driver is a 2005 Crown Victoria P.I. I regularly get 20-22 mpg in that 13 year old, 4.9L V8 barge. Yet Jeep wants to impress me with 23 MPG in a 2018 Wrangler. Wow.
Ummm…. No. Not true. Except for the truly smallest, lightest cars, the average fuel mileage in the city for any vehicle in the 50s and 60s ran about 10mpg and I personally remember people boasting of FIVE mpg being good mileage for them. Highway economy of sedans and wagons were, at best, around 18 mpg. So for a rolling concrete block to get 23 in the city is pretty good.
And boasting about your ’03 Crown Vic only emphasizes this as it is far more aerodynamic than ANY Wrangler and that 20-22mpg is highway rating, not city rating. That is, unless you were intentionally hyper-miling, at which point I’ve taken the first-gen JKU to 25mpg highway and have a photo to prove it.
So let’s see, first you say “not true…except” which means my statement was true about SOME cars in the 1950’s. I’ve had a lot of cars from the 50’s and 60’s too, pal. Some got 8pmgs, some got low 20’s. And here’s some news for you: what do you think cars in the 1950’s resembled? That’s right, rolling concrete blocks (for the most part). The fact that the 2018 Wrangler has 60 years of technological improvements under it’s belt compared to cars of the 1950’s and can only manage 23 MPG is not impressive to me. Maybe it is to you, but it’s not to me.
You are probably the first person to ever refer to a Crown Vic as Aerodynamic. I get 18-20mpg city and 22mpg on the highway in that bloated, V8, rear wheel drive boat.
But if you are impressed with 23mpg in a 4 banger 2018 Wrangler good for you. I’ve had 3 Jeeps, I like Jeeps, but I’m not impressed with this one.
Comparing the fuel efficiency of a 80 HP, 2600 pound car from the 1950s to a 270 HP 4500 pound truck is ridiculous. Comparing the highway fuel efficiency of a car purpose built for highway cruising to a purpose built off road vehicle is ridiculous.
“Can only manage 23 mpg.”
A 4500 pound truck 10 years ago would have gotten 14-15.
I’ll never understand people who complain about technology. What does it accomplish?
Re: “Purpose built for highway cruising vs. offroad”. They are not giving you the MPG for the Wrangler when it’s being off roaded. They are giving you the city/highway mileage. I get your point but let’s be honest: 75% of the time a Wrangler is driven, it’s on city streets.
A 1950 Olds 88 could get 18mpg city and 23mpg highway, and I can assure you, that had more than 80hp and weighed more than 2300 pounds.
The point is retrospect: we are supposed to get all geeked up at a 2018 4cyl, 8 gear trans Wrangler that can eek out 23 MPGs when cars 60 years ago with about 10% of the tech we have now could hit that number. Yes they are very different vehicles, but I would expect more from a Wrangler at this point in time.
Again, if you’re impressed by the Wrangler and it’s 4 cylinder, 23 MPG good for you.
“A 1950 Olds 88 could get 18mpg city and 23mpg highway, and I can assure you, that had more than 80hp and weighed more than 2300 pounds.”
— Do forgive me if I find that hard to believe. Not impossible, mind you, but difficult.
Why? Because my family had a ’59 Olds Dynamic 88 (with the color bar speedometer) and the best highway mileage we could ever get was around 18mpg, nowhere close to the 23 you claim. And by no means then, could the city mileage have been anywhere close to that highway mileage of 18.
Or did your parents hypermile even back then?
The Wrangler, in 2008, was rated at 16 city, 19 highway. Where I live, most people couldn’t even get the 16…I managed 17.5. Where most people couldn’t get the 19, I was getting 21-25 depending on how hard I pushed it. Never exceeded 70 and preferred to cruise at 65. I was also courteous enough to stay in the right lane unless I needed to pass someone going slower (which was surprisingly frequent, even on 70mph freeways.)
“So let’s see, first you say “not true…except” which means my statement was true about SOME cars in the 1950’s. I’ve had a lot of cars from the 50’s and 60’s too, pal.”
Did you drive a Fiat 500 back then? A Peugeot? Renault? Maybe an early Toyota… My first car was considered a “compact” and it was more than twice the size of the Fiat 500 with 96 horses under the hood and still only JUST gave me about 12 mpg in town and 18 mpg on the highway. Of course, at 25¢ per gallon, it only cost me a dollar a day to drive to work and back–a 60-mile round trip.
“You are probably the first person to ever refer to a Crown Vic as Aerodynamic. I get 18-20mpg city and 22mpg on the highway in that bloated, V8, rear wheel drive boat.”
— I said “more aerodynamic”. Sure, the thing was a big, heavy boat, but it was still far more slippery than a bloomin’ tall, slab-square box, too.
I didn’t drive them “back then” I drove them recently. I had a 51 Olds 88 in 2013 with the 303ci and yes I know how to calculate gas mileage. Premium gas and I was getting a combined 19.7 mpg (not that I drove it often). And that’s a V8 engine as well.
I also had a 1954 Hudson Jet 2 years ago. A smallish car to be sure, but still with a V6 and very, very low tech even at that time (1954). My best clocked combined MPG was 22.4 mpg, again with a V6.
My entire point is that I expect, with all the tech we have now, to get better than 23mpg out of a 4cyl. Wrangler. As I have said, I like Jeeps, I have had 3 of them, but I was hoping for a little better news on the MPGs.
And BTW the color bar speedos were awesome, I wish they would bring those back.
Considering your recent statement, I can only assume you’re babying the cars, unlike if they were daily drivers. That does make a difference in fuel economy.
But then, today’s drivers ARE idiots compared to back then, too. So I’ll give it to you. If you drove the modern Wrangler the way you’re driving those old cars, I can guarantee better fuel mileage.
“And BTW the color bar speedos were awesome, I wish they would bring those back.”
— Digital version would be easy. Those old ones were notorious for breaking the cable due to drag. In three years the cable broke twice on the one we had. No lubrication and no bearings on the bar itself.
@ Vulpine: He’s talking about 6 cylinder cars not the fleet average with V8s included.
10 mpg with a V8 in the city 16 or so in the city with a 6. 20-21 on the road, even 23.
Nash, Rambler, Studebaker, Kaiser 6s all did quite well. Carsofchaos never mentioned V8s in the first place.
Lots of old PM road tests out there to verify what Carsofchaos said.
Dweez, my first car was an early 60s 6-cylinder… 194 C.l.D. at 96 horses. Not even it could exceed 10-12 mpg city in a supposedly “compact” body. But then, it also had the 2-speed PowerGlide transmission in it.
23 mpg city and 25 mpg highway, with an 8-speed transmission? That there’s some really great aerodynamic improvement.
It’s a 4500 pound truck. 23 city is a 40% improvement over what we saw just 10 years ago.
23 MPG in a modern Jeep, with all the government-mandated emissions gear and airbags, safety standard bumpers, plus comfort features such as noise deadening material, air conditioning, heated seats, navigation systems and infotainment is PRETTY DARN GOOD.
My first Jeep, a 1948 CJ-2A had none of that. All that stuff adds weight plus loads of extra wiring and other things that you don’t think about. PLUS, making 275 horsepower at the same time !
Look at the horsepower of the 1950s cars AND JEEPS. Nowhere near 275 HP.
All these factors make 23 MPG a large accomplishment. And look at what they had to do to get it- start/stop at stoplights and stop signs, an eight-speed transmission, aluminum for some body parts just to mention a few.
23 MPG is quite an accomplishment.
Maybe the next generation will be nuclear-powered and the mileage will impress even you.