Honestly, I expected to spend my time with the Jeep Wrangler 4xe in a completely mixed state of mind. I would’ve wagered that adding a battery pack and electric motor to a Wrangler Rubicon would result in a confused vehicle. After putting over 1,000 miles on one, I can tell you that this is not the case. And in fact, the Wrangler 4xe is actually pretty damn good.

My family and I took a trip to June Lake for the weekend. We loaded up the Wrangler to its gills, as it’s not necessarily a cargo king. Still, it handled two adults, a child, a 65-pound dog, and all the stuff you’d pack for that group for three nights away. It fit but I had to Tetris the shit out of it. Regardless, the Wrangler cared not for the load on which it was shouldered, and we pointed its nose to the North.

June Lake sits north of Mammoth, California in the Eastern Sierra region of the state. It’s a shimmering body of water packed with trout and surrounded by peaks that reach far into the sky. The town itself is small, friendly, and has a brewery, so I was good to go.

On the highway, the Wrangler has no problem cruising at 80 to 85 miles per hour. I kept the vehicle in E-Save mode. This prioritizes the gas engine over the electric motor to conserve battery. I also activated the Max Regen setting, so that when I lifted the brakes would tug a bit and recapture some energy. This system is great at slowing for corners or down hilly sections. With the battery depleted during parts of the journey, I saw 18 mpg average for the trip. If I ran in fully electric for some time, I saw as high as 40 mpg indicated, which is frankly insane in any Jeep. More so in a Rubicon wearing KO2 tires and loaded up with people, pets, and things.

The meat and potatoes of the powertrain are the 2.0-liter turbo four-cylinder engine up front, the 8-speed transmission in the middle, and the 17-kWh lithium-ion battery pack and electric motor. With their powers combined, the Wrangler 4xe churns out 375 horsepower and 470 pound-feet of torque. That’s more torque than every other Wrangler available right now including both the diesel and the Rubicon 392. Per the EPA, you can see up to 25 miles of pure electric driving. I was able to hit 19 miles but that was with me running at highways speeds and pushing it to see how well it could handle actual speed in this mode. And it did so far better than I expected.

It’s not cheap, of course, with an as-tested price of $66k. But that’s how much fully loaded Wranglers cost these days, and people seem happy to pay that much. You don’t need a Rubicon version either, as Jeep offers the Sahara 4xe which starts at $49,805 before destination and handling. The Rubicon starts just over $53k, and the High Altitude starts at $55k. So our tester here clearly has quite a few options bolted on to it. Also, don’t forget this Wrangler is eligible for federal and state tax incentives to bring the price back down quite a bit. So if you shop this one smartly, I think you could walk away with a great deal.

And you’d have the torquiest Wrangler of the bunch, that might sip the least amount of fuel as well, depending on your commute.

We’ve got a video review coming on this one as well. But if you have more questions, let us hear them in the comments below.