Jeep Recon EV's Real-World Highway Range Falls Short of 160 Miles

Jeep’s new all-electric Recon is a purpose-built off-roader, and its boxy silhouette, upright bumpers and chunky tires make it a willing companion on dirt. Those very traits, however, work against it once the pavement stretches out. A fresh highway test has put hard numbers behind what the styling already hinted at.

Car and Driver ran a showroom-fresh Recon at a steady 75 mph and watched the battery drain to empty after roughly 160 miles. That’s a notable gap from the EPA’s combined rating of 222 miles, and it also undercuts the agency’s highway-only estimate by a further 36 miles. For a vehicle whose owners will routinely need to cover distance before reaching a trailhead, the shortfall is worth understanding before a purchase.

The root cause is efficiency. Even with a sizable 94-kilowatt-hour usable pack (100.5 kWh gross), the Recon managed only about 1.7 miles per kilowatt-hour in the test. That places it near the bottom of the efficiency table among EVs currently sold in America, though it does edge out the even thirstier GMC Hummer EV and Mercedes-Benz G 580 Electric, both of which hover around 1.4 miles/kWh. Off-road hardware, aerodynamics be damned, has a cost.

In practice, the numbers get more sobering. Following the widely recommended practice of running between 10% and 80% state of charge means only 70% of the pack is usable on a trip, which translates to something like 112 miles between charging stops at 75 mph. Slow the pace and the picture improves; brief time behind the wheel showed the trip computer reading around 2.5 miles/kWh in gentler conditions.

Jeep quotes a 10-to-80% DC fast-charge time of 23 minutes, which is respectable for the segment. The trade-off is frequency: more stops and, consequently, larger charging bills than a conventional electric crossover would incur. Buyers drawn to the Recon’s capability should treat range planning as part of the ownership experience rather than an afterthought.