Jeep Teases Electric Wrangler Driving Underwater, Which May Actually Happen
Jeep knows that it has to equip the electric Wrangler with enough cool features to convince fans to buy one.
Jeep (along with its parent company, Stellantis) has been pretty open about the fact that it intends to offer an array of electric vehicles in the near future. In fact, Jeep CEO Christian Meunier wants to add an EV in every segment the automaker competes in by 2025, and become the greenest SUV brand on the planet in the process. But this isn’t just about saving the planet – Meunier wants to leverage electric power to make Jeep’s vehicles better, and in a new teaser video, that includes making an electric Wrangler that can drive underwater, apparently.
Yes, aside from offering a frunk with loads of storage space, four individually-powered wheels, biometric facial recognition, dynamic tire pressure, peer-to-peer charging, remote vehicle tracking, autonomous driving capability, and drone connectivity, apparently a lot of Jeep fans are telling the brand that they want an electric Wrangler capable of doubling as a submarine of sorts.
“There is a little wink we have at the end, which is probably post-2030, but I know a lot of enthusiasts and a lot of our communities are requesting it,” Meunier told The Detroit News. “There are some crazy, very amazing people in the Jeep community who do that type of thing already with an ICE, so you can imagine with a battery car what it would be.”
As EVs don’t need air to operate – unlike an ICE vehicle – the idea is that an electric Wrangler could conceivably go underwater and drive around just fine, so long as its components are sealed up and watertight. Of course, more than one Jeep owner has done this in the past, albeit with some sort of apparatus attached that sticks out above the water, allowing the engine to breathe. In theory, an EV wouldn’t need such concessions.
It may seem crazy, but Meunier’s comment indicates that anything is on the table for Jeep at this point, and it’s easy to see why. Like every other automaker, Jeep needs to convince buyers that EVs are superior to ICE vehicles, and given the fact that it has one of the larger, more rabid fanbases, it’s going to take a lot of convincing – or at least a ton of cool features – to win over owners. Perhaps the ability to explore bodies of water will be the killer app that pushes those folks over the edge?
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