Stony Silence

The plug-in hybrid version of the Grand Cherokee claims to keep all the usual off-road ability, but now with zero-emissions and zero-running noise

- Adam Binnie

Jeep now have to navigate pollution regs that make traversing the Rubicon Trail look simple

THE VOICEOVER BOOMS OUT A QUESTION that you can't help but feel contains heavy hints at the preferred answer: 'Were you born to follow a path or were you born free?' It accompanies images of the new Jeep Grand Cherokee fording a river and cresting a granite slab.

Body has evolved while the tech inside is revolutionary for a big Jeep

I'm watching the commercial through a letterbox squint because the television is in front of a huge glass wall, backlit by the Texas sun. But even with eyes tight shut, references to freedom in Jeep's marketing for the fifth-generation Grand Cherokee would be hard to miss.

Freedom from what? Ten years ago, it would've been from the nine-to-five and city streets. Buying a Jeep meant buying an adventure, one enhanced by massive off-road tyres, a cooler full of "lite" beer, and enough gas to leave civilisation behind.

Huntin', fishin', shootin', and now plug-in

Now things aren't so black and white. To continue to offer that escape, the Grand Cherokee has to navigate pollution regulations for city use that make traversing the Rubicon Trail-Jeep's benchmark off-road route in the Sierra Nevada-look simple. Which it also has to do. Hence the "100 per cent freedom, zero emissions" 4xe plug-in hybrid, which can run emission-free officially for 50 kilometres.

There's a new gunslinger in town and his name's Binnie, Adam Binnie

To do that it combines a 2.0-litre, turbocharged, four-cylinder petrol engine with a 17.3-kWh (gross) lithium-ion battery that feeds an electric motor. The 272 hp and 400 Nm generated by petrol alone swell to 380 hp and 637 Nm with electricity's contribution (which also contributes to the 2.4-tonne kerb weight).