Just ordered 2nd PHEV

We ordered a Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe today. It will replace our 2015 Grand Cherokee EcoDiesel when it arrives, which could be 3-5 months from now.

Similar to our spontaneous Clarity purchase, we just went in to get some information. We’ll be doing a lease, which we typically don’t do. The reason is that the dealer will handle the $7500 Fed credit, so that comes right off the sales price. The trade in value brings the balance down to almost exactly the residual value, we’ll make up any difference. The net result is a new car and no payment for 3 years. We’ll deal with the buy out at that time. There’s also a $2500 rebate from Oregon.

The Jeep has a 25 mile EV range, which is sufficient for almost all of our daily driving. The primary reason for the acquisition is that that we can tow the Jeep behind our diesel guzzling motorhome. Hey, with 2 vehicles that will rarely need fuel we can put more in the beast. We’ve driven the Clarity separately on a few RV trips and being able to charge at an RV park is a great benefit.

I didn’t see a Jeep sub-forum here. Once we get it I’ll petition for one.

 

Nothing is cheap these days. Keeping the current Jeep beyond the Dieselgate v2.0 settlement warranty, which expires next May, could become a costly proposition. Not to mention the coat of diesel.

We’ll trade in the ticking time bomb, drive the new one for 3 years with no payment and minimal operating expense and get a $2500 check from the governor. We have 2 years left on a 1.9% loan on the Clarity. So that will be paid off about a year before we’ll have to square up the $30K residual on the Jeep.

 

Just got a call from the dealer today informing us the the Jeep is being shipped and should arrive by the first or second week of October. That will give us about a month with the car before taking a bit of a road trip on Thanksgiving week. During the three months that have passed since we placed the order, I discovered that our Pro-EV Governor does not allow the $2500 state (Oregon) rebate for vehicles that have a MSRP over $50K. Coincidentally, she also happens to be the least loved Governor in the country.

We’ll just have to enjoy not buying $5.50/gallon diesel (we’re trying to keep up with California) and charging with very low cost electricity at home or some of the free stations in the area.

 

In ballpark numbers, the new Jeep is $59.5K. The dealer will handle the Fed credit of $7.5K which makes our cost $52K. Our trade in value of $18K leaves us with a balance of $34K. The residual value, or buy out, at the end of the lease is $33K. Looked at another way, the value of the trade in covers the lease payments for the term of the lease, within $1K or so.

I was anticipating the same state rebate on this car that we received on the Clarity of $2.5K, however, vehicles with a MSRP over $50K are not eligible for the rebate. With the average EV now costing $66K, it might be time for our forward thinking legislators to reevaluate the restrictions on the incentives being used to achieve the desired outcome.

At the end of the lease we’ll consider our options. The way prices are soaring on new cars, it might be a bargain to buy the car for $33K in 3 years.

 

The Jeep does not have that capability. With a PHEV there is no need to resort to such desperate measures. The vehicle can be driven normally with a depleted battery or a press of a button will start the battery charging process if so desired.

The electric motor is not at the wheels. It is located before the transmission/transfer case, which is disengaged to allow for flat towing. Additionally, the vehicle is powered down while towing, which removes any smart technology from the operation. A supplemental braking system will operate the brakes on the Jeep while it is being towed.

 

We pick it up tomorrow. While awaiting delivery, I looked into the availability of a baseplate for the new model. A baseplate is mounted where tow hooks would normally be installed and create points where a tow bar can be connected to allow the vehicle to be towed behind another vehicle. None of the major manufacturers have or can confirm that they have a baseplate that will fit. RoadMaster, who are located in Vancouver, WA has generously offered to try and fit one of their existing units or engineer and fabricate a new unit to fit and install it at no charge, in exchange for us providing them with a vehicle to work with. We’ll bring them the vehicle on 10/18.

 

Recreational towing, including 4 wheels down, or flat towing, is addressed in the owners manual. Properly equipped, the vehicle can be flat towed. We are getting a Grand Cherokee, rather than a Wrangler. Since both vehicles utilize the same PHEV platform, it would be reasonable to conclude that, if properly equipped, both could be flat towed. Always read the owners manual to confirm.

I addressed the tow charging question in Post #8.

Are you certain that Rivian allows their vehicles to be tow charged?

 

Yes, I recently watched the series. While it was entertaining, it was, in my opinion extremely disappointing from the perspective of riding and driving EV’s on the trip. Spoiler Alert: on day one they had to tow charge the prototype Rivian trucks, the solar panels affixed to the diesel powered Sprinter van failed to charge the motorcycles, presumably for the entire journey, as it was never shown again, they had to resort to charging all vehicles with a truck mounted diesel generator and at one point the diesel Sprinter ran out of fuel. The motorcycles were set up to charge on Level 2 and they didn’t have an adapter for 120V charging. Once they got an adapter, most of the 120V charging opportunities failed or performed miserably. For nearly the entirety of the trip in South America, they simply didn’t discuss or show how the vehicles were getting charged. I’d bet they were using the diesel generator more that they cared to admit. What they did to get through most of Mexico was a complete cop out.

Anyhow, the last I knew, Rivian no longer allows their vehicles to be tow charged.

We did pick up the Grand Cherokee 4xe (pronounced (“four by e”) today and we both drove it short distances on the way home. There’s a great deal to learn. It defaults to Hybrid Mode, which prioritizes battery usage and then uses the gas engine in an effort to be as efficient as possible. It will eventually deplete the battery, use the gas engine when necessary and then run on gas. In Electric mode it uses just the battery unless the accelerator is floored. It is not quite, but almost an electric-only mode. In e-Save it preserves the HV battery SOC in a similar fashion to HV mode on our Clarity. It can also be set to charge the battery to 40%, 60% or 80% while driving.

Our salesman, who has the Wrangler 4xe and has ordered a GC 4xe for his wife, was not aware of the charging feature. We hopped in a Wrangler on the floor and it does have the charging feature, however it did not have the 40/60/80 options. We concluded without further research that it must just charge to a specific level. So there are some software difference between the 2 models.

Ours was the first of 2 delivered to the dealership and possibly one of the first to reach the west coast.

 

From Post #8 of this thread.

When the instructions in the manual are followed for “Recreational Towing” the wheels are disengaged from the engine, electric motor, transmission and transfer case.

 

The question still stands. I’d need to see wording from a Rivian manual that states the vehicle can be tow-charged with instructions on how to perform that task. I just read through the Charging and Towing sections of a Rivian R1T manual and it was devoid of any such wording.

Conjecture from a fireside chat does not confirm that the practice is allowed by the manufacturer.

 

I want to follow up on this since things didn’t go quite the way we had been led to believe they might. It was the salesman who had suggested the Fed credit and trade in value would come very close to equaling the total amount of monthly lease payments, so that we would likely be able to drive off in a new vehicle with no money down and no monthly payment.

Now the actually, story. In the 4 months since ordering the car, the price went up $1000. He would not honor the price we were given when we ordered the car. The trade in value went down $3000. He would not budge a single dollar on that. With all the associated fees, we were now off about $5000 from the “break even” concept that was his brainchild. Now I’m thinking we could either pay the $5K to get back to even, or have a monthly payment of around $150 for the next 39 months. But the numbers he’d put in front of us reflected a payment of $285/mo. He said there’s $5,500 of interest. I asked “Interest on what?” since we’re only short $5K. He didn’t know, so I asked him to find out and show us what the payment would be if we put up an additional $5K.

Well, it turns out, even with an additional $5K down, we’d still have a lease payment of $144/mo. How is that possible? There is interest on the depreciation, even though we could have paid for all of the depreciation up front. In this case the depreciation is about $26K, the difference between a $60K MSRP and a $34K residual value. We opted to not shell out the additional funds. This was the only objective that we were going to be able to achieve, no money down, so we seized the moment. It was our lone victory.

There is a current buy out, or payoff of $40K, which will decrease to $34K over the 39 month term of the lease. I haven’t crunched the numbers, but I could take out a $40K loan and pay interest to our Credit Union rather than to Chrysler. That would bring a much higher monthly payment, and since we were trying to avoid a payment in the first place, we probably won’t go that route. It’s relatively painless for the next 39 months to stick with the lease. We know that we’ll have to address the $34K buy out at the end of the agreement, if we opt to keep the car. It is likely that we will buy it, so we’ll probably throw some cash at the balance and borrow an amount that maintains a reasonable payment. We have 2 years remaining on a 1.9% loan on the Clarity, so we’ll have 15 months of freedom from that payment before we have to decide on financing the balance due on the Jeep.

In the mean time we’ll be zipping around town on cheap electrons. We got some free ones yesterday.