So in the end, you respect the crap out of the Gladiator. That somewhat makes sense, as the Gladiator competes most directly against the survive-anything versions of the Tacoma, not the more amenable midsizers from Ford and Chevy. Jeep sold only about 40,000 last year, versus a quarter-million Wranglers. However, the Gladiator might be too much of a good thing. This pickup is insanely capable, and the addition of a bed just ups the versatility. When it comes to a life lived outside, there's a reason why Jeeps have been so popular for so long. That said, if I were a full-time river guide, I'd be shopping for a Gladiator Rubicon. But after a week of bouncing the Gladiator around the New Jersey 'burbs, I was ready to borrow a Ridgeline and realign the vertebrae in my lower back. Discomfort is a virtue.Īs with the Wrangler, one adapts. More than once during my testing, I wondered if Jeep had A-B'ed the Gladiator against a farm tractor, just to make sure it wasn't suggesting anything too softly suburban.Īdmittedly, this is the Jeep curse even its benign crossover SUVs, which aren't ever likely to crawl a rock or ford a stream, are engineered to ride like Jeeps - which is to say, evoke the legacy of a homely military scout vehicle. On knobby tires with off-road shocks and a suitable beefed-up suspension, it's a spine-rattler. While the Colorado, the Ford Ranger, and the Honda Ridgeline all ride (sort of) like cars on normal public roads, the Jeep makes no such concessions. None of these positives mean that the Gladiator, like the Jeep Wrangler, is an even remotely practical pickup, if you aren't a hardcore outdoors person or committed weekend off-road-warrior.
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As far as legacy players, the more crude and purposeful Toyota pickups are the Gladiator's natural foes, but those Tacomas - the TRD Pro and TRD Sport - are aging vehicles, lacking the Gladiator's pizzazz. It's off-road cred is superior to the Chevy Colorado, although if you go for the ZR2 Bison trim level of the Chevy, you're giving the Jeep something to think about. The Gladiator is also probably the coolest-looking and most capable midsize pickup money can currently buy. Nobody needs to remind the company that pickups have been hot sellers in the US market. That's important for the brand, for consumers, and for Jeep's business. Ram is also making an electric ProMaster delivery van that will be incorporated into Amazon’s fleet starting in 2023.īoth the Jeep EV and Ram 1500 EV will likely use Stellantis’ STLA platform, which is one of four platforms used by the automaker for its upcoming lineup of EVs.Īs noted by Roadshow’s Daniel Golson, Stellantis actually left in some of the vehicle’s design outlines in the teaser image, which show more of the truck than the automaker’s marketing team probably would have preferred.The Gladiator has been greeted by generally rapturous praise by reviewers, and that's understandable: Jeep lacked a pickup - and it lacked a midsize pickup, so the Gladiator filled two important gaps in the portfolio simultaneously. The image appears to be just a design sketch, leaving open the possibility that Ram has yet to settle on a final form of its upcoming electric truck. On Tuesday, Stellantis also teased the upcoming Ram 1500 truck with images showing off the vehicle’s lighting setup.
That includes EV versions of the Ram 1500 pickup truck and an electric Dodge muscle car. The new Jeep EV would fall within the comprehensive plan last year by Stellantis, the multi-national conglomeration that formed last year when Fiat Chrysler merged with the French PSA Group, to electrify the lineups at most of its brands. The automaker recently announced that it would release “zero-emission” versions of all of its vehicles by 2025, along with plug-hybrid variants.
The automaker has released plug-in hybrid versions of its Wrangler and Grand Cherokee SUVs and plans an off-roading version of the Grand Cherokee, the Trailhawk, which also comes with a hybrid motor.īut the unnamed SUV coming out next year will be Jeep’s first purely battery-electric vehicle.
Jeep has been slower to embrace electrification as compared to many of its rivals. The company isn’t sharing any other details or even the vehicle’s name, but it did confirm that the new EV will launch in 2023. Jeep, the iconic American brand owned by Stellantis, revealed the first images of its upcoming electric SUV.
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