Car and driver Jeep

A diesel engine and a hybrid powertrain are coming to the next-generation Jeep Wrangler, Chrysler revealed today. The news comes as part of a revised product plan the company presented to industry analysts, and it’s one that relies even more heavily on the Jeep brand. The new Wrangler, which is due out in 2017, won’t offer the alternative powertrains at launch. Instead, a chart of Chrysler’s product plan showed the diesel arriving before 2022. The hybrid comes after that. Both are for the four-door Unlimited. Chrysler did not identify which diesel engine will appear in the Wrangler; presumably the 240-hp 3.0-liter V-6 turbo-diesel the company recently introduced in the Ram pickup is a candidate. As for the hybrid, the company characterizes it as a “mild hybrid, ” meaning that it wouldn’t be able to propel the Wrangler on battery power alone; this system also will appear in the Ram pickup. We’ve previously confirmed that the new Wrangler will offer a pickup body style and will feature aluminum-intensive construction.

As for the Jeep brand, Fiat-Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne and the rest of the company’s brass see the shift to SUVs and trucks accelerating due to the current low fuel prices, and they have upped their sales targets for Jeep. The brand sold a record 1.2 million units in 2015, a total the company hopes to push to 2 million worldwide by 2018.