2025 Jeep Wagoneer S: A Glitchy $74,000 Mess That Proves Stellantis Should Stick To Gas

It’s hard to pinpoint many things that have gone right at Stellantis in recent years. The European-American carmaker conglomerate has struggled with declining sales, soaring prices, quality issues, rampant infighting and a culture reportedly so miserable that both labor unions and car dealers high-fived each other when its CEO was ousted last year. 

Amid a trans-Atlantic blame game over what went wrong, another theme kept coming up: overly aggressive investments in electric vehicles while its Jeep, Dodge and Ram loyalists remained firmly attached to gasoline models.

2025 Jeep Wagoneer S Launch Edition

Photo by: Patrick George

But if that was really the case, after spending some time with the new electric 2025 Jeep Wagoneer S, I’m wondering where the hell all that money went. Because the final product doesn’t feel like it can help with Jeep’s current woes, and it doesn’t make a case for Stellantis’ high-tech future. 

(Full Disclosure: Jeep loaned me a Wagoneer S for a week of testing.) 

2025 Jeep Wagoneer S: What Is It?

First and foremost, don’t let the name fool you. The electric Wagoneer S has, confusingly, nothing in common with the larger (and slow-selling) Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer. It’s sleeker, smaller and all-electric, built on Stellantis’ STLA Large platform, the same as the new Dodge Charger Daytona EV.

You even get the same 100.5-kilowatt-hour battery as the Dodge, as well as a dual-motor setup with a good amount of off-road driving modes to make it worthy of the Jeep badge. 

2025 Jeep Wagoneer S Launch Edition

Photo by: Patrick George

On paper, the Wagoneer S has all the right ingredients. It’s sleek, offers up to 303 miles of range (294 miles for the Limited), table-stakes for today’s EV pack. That’s even impressive when you consider the Launch Edition’s 600 horsepower, which rockets this Jeep from zero to 60 mph in just 3.4 seconds. That means it’s nearly as quick as the electric Charger, and thus, a whole lot of other gas-powered Dodge and Jeep performance cars. 

Unfortunately, looks and speed are about the only nice things I can say about the Wagoneer S after a few days behind the wheel.  

2025 Jeep Wagoneer S Launch Edition

Photo by: Patrick George

2025 Jeep Wagoneer S: Driving Impressions

Given their mechanical similarities, I couldn’t help but compare the Wagoneer S to the Charger Daytona just a bit. The Dodge has plenty of issues as an EV—sluggish charging times, wonky software, not many special features like bidirectional charging—but it has its charms. It’s loud, it’s fast, it looks great and it’s actually pretty fun to drive, even if the Hemi faithful are reluctant to embrace it.

2025 Jeep Wagoneer S Launch Edition

Photo by: Patrick George

The Jeep has far less in the way of charm. Frankly, it doesn’t really drive like anything. The suspension is bouncy but firm, as if crafted and tuned by people unused to the weight characteristics of an EV battery. The steering is tight, but incredibly vague. Body roll is off the charts. And its two-mode regenerative braking setup is jerky and rough, never feeling like it even wants to drive like an EV should.

This happened. A lot. 

Photo by: Patrick George

That’s a pervasive problem here. Step inside and hit the power button with your foot off the brake to enter accessory mode; the central screen says “Ignition On.” What ignition? The battery? I certainly hope not. It never feels purpose-built as an EV, perhaps because the STLA Large platform’s hedge-your-bets approach means it’s also designed to accommodate gas engines.

It doesn’t lean into the strengths of EVs and doesn’t feel like it was made by anyone who was interested in doing so, either. You get only some cursory EV settings in the infotainment system, too, as if shoehorned into the company’s proprietary software that it uses for everything.

2025 Jeep Wagoneer S Launch Edition

Photo by: Patrick George

2025 Jeep Wagoneer S: Tech Woes Abound

Software is a big part of the headaches here. My Wagoneer S tester felt like it was still in beta. Switch the central driver display to navigation mode, and the map glitches and freezes constantly like a buggy video game from the 1990s. Then it flashes white and resets itself entirely.

2025 Jeep Wagoneer S Launch Edition

Photo by: Patrick George

Oh, and that’s if you can get the TomTom (remember them?) navigation system to even load—my car hung so much that I had to restart it sometimes to even use the maps. Here’s a tip: just use Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. Asking the voice-controlled navigation system to get you anywhere always feels like it has three to five extra steps than it should.

All of this is particularly frustrating because I’m not even talking about EV issues here. I’m talking about navigation systems, digital dashboards—things that have been normal on cars for years. Stellantis couldn’t even get the basics right here, agnostic of powertrain. 

2025 Jeep Wagoneer S Launch Edition

Photo by: Patrick George

At least the interior is, on the whole, pretty comfortable. I miss the Barcalounger-grade seats from Jeep and Dodge cars in the 2010s (more of that famous cost-cutting, I assume.) But it’s roomy overall. With 41 cubic feet of total cargo space, it’s on par with options like the Honda Pilot and Kia Telluride. You get a small container in the frunk, but it’s nothing terribly notable. For family- and gear-hauling duties, it’ll do just fine, as it’s just a tad smaller than the popular Grand Cherokee.

2025 Jeep Wagoneer S Launch Edition

Photo by: Patrick George

It’s fast. I’ll give it that. In fact, the Wagoneer S is fast as all get out. Stomp the accelerator and you’ll be edging 100 mph much more quickly than you’d expect. It could probably run with that Charger Daytona, easily. But it has to be pushed to be fast—it never really encourages speed or bad behavior. It’s just kinda there when you want it, if you choose to. 

Ultimately, it doesn’t really drive like anything. It’s another big, fast, electric SUV. What makes it notable? What makes it feel like a Jeep? It has drive modes like Auto, Snow, Sport, Sand, and Eco, but with only 6.4 inches of ground clearance, don’t expect to conquer much in the way of wilderness here. 

2025 Jeep Wagoneer S Launch Edition

Photo by: Patrick George

The maximum DC fast-charging speed is rated at 203 kilowatts, and Jeep says it’ll go from 5% to 80% in about 28 minutes. I threw the Wagoneer S onto a 350 kW charger, but only saw speeds of 150 kW at most. Ultimately, it went from 35% to 80% in about 19 minutes. Nothing mind-blowing, but it at least it worked on the first try. 

2025 Jeep Wagoneer S: Verdict

The 2025 Wagoneer S starts at $65,200. In the Launch Edition 4xe trim like my tester, the final bill was $73,790.

2025 Jeep Wagoneer S Launch Edition

Photo by: Patrick George

For this privilege, you get a fast SUV with a familiar badge that doesn’t really drive like anything from that brand. You also do not get any hands-free highway driving assistance, like Ford BlueCruise, General Motors’ Super Cruise or Tesla Autopilot. You don’t get bidirectional charging. You don’t get any slick, modern-feeling technology. You don’t get class-leading DC fast-charging. You don’t get a Tesla-style NACS plug, and Supercharger access with an adapter is still months away. And Jeep wants $74,000 for this? 

The Wagoneer S doesn’t feel like it was crafted by anyone who wanted to make an EV, or was interested in them, or had even really driven them all that much before this—shove a big battery into a gas platform, add a couple menus in UConnect (which used to be a great software system) and call it a day. That’s not going to cut it anymore. 

I’m at a loss as to why I’d tell you to consider the Jeep Wagoneer S. And that speaks to a bigger problem at Jeep and Stellantis right now, especially with regard to quality control. Maybe the company’s second round of EVs, starting with the Jeep Recon, will fix some of these issues. It may not even be interested in doing so. Stellantis seems happy to lean into gas-powered cars, given the current trends in America—for now, anyway. 

Maybe that’s fine. Maybe it just should stick to gas and let some other company deliver the future.

But even that doesn’t solve the problem here: the Wagoneer S is another overpriced, uncompetitive Jeep product that won’t help the company find its way out of the wilderness. 

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com

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