Imagine that McDonald’s added filet mignon to the menu. Imagine that it was quite good.
Perfect mid-rare. Well-seasoned. Perhaps not the best steak you’ve ever had in a restaurant, but in the top third. Imagine it was reasonably priced for filet mignon – perhaps $28 with buttery-soft fondant potatoes and grilled asparagus on the side. Reasonable for a big city gourmet meal.
Would that item succeed on the McDonald’s menu? Or would it never sell because no one goes to McDonald’s for a fine steak dinner?
These are the thoughts you have as you pilot the 2025 Jeep Wagoneer S. It’s exceptionally quick. It’s quite luxurious. It has style and personality to spare. It has a price tag near $70,000.
Does anyone think to themselves, “I have about $70,000 to spend. I want a high-performance luxury vehicle for the road. I want to go electric. I wonder what Jeep has for me?”
I’m here to tell you that McDonald’s high-end steak, er, Jeep’s exceptionally sporty electric vehicle (EV), is quite good for the price. It’s up to you to decide whether you’d go to that place for this thing.
Which Trim Level
Jeep builds the Wagoneer S in Limited and Launch Edition trims. They loaned me the Limited for a week of driving around Washington, D.C., and its suburbs. I found it plenty luxurious. The Launch Edition they didn’t loan me also comes with 100 more horsepower, massaging seats, ventilated front and rear seats, and a more powerful 19-speaker McIntosh sound system. But the 506-watt Alpine sound system in the Limited has nothing to be ashamed of.
New 2025 Jeep Wagoneer S Prices
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Retail Price
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Fair Purchase Price (92620)
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$67,195 |
TBD |
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$72,195 |
TBD |
Favorite Feature
The Jeep Wagoneer S is unbelievably, almost irresponsibly quick for a family SUV.
Jeep says the Limited model has 500 horsepower and all-wheel drive (AWD), thanks to a pair of electric motors. It gets from zero to 60 mph in 4 seconds.
It felt more powerful than that. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they’ve undersold the numbers. Automakers occasionally do that in the early days of electric vehicles.
In Sport mode, this is one of the few vehicles on the market that will chirp its tires when you accelerate from 20 to 40 mph – the power overcomes traction for a split second. That happens in a handful of exotic cars and, somehow, this Jeep family SUV.
You’ll have few opportunities to safely and legally test that. But it’s intoxicating.
What It’s Like to Drive
Almost all EVs are quick – electric motors have 100% of their torque available at all times with no need to build it up. Many are ponies that know just that one trick.
The Wagoneer S knows a few. It’s surprisingly lithe for an SUV. A low center of gravity and the balance of motors in the front and rear make handling exceptionally crisp. Braking is strong and betrays none of the squishy feel you sometimes find in regenerative brakes.
The best reason to buy the Wagoneer S is its track-worthy on-road performance – a weird sentence to write about a Jeep vehicle.
Interior Comfort and Technology
The Wagoneer S is slightly smaller inside than you expect, given its midsize dimensions. I think it will fit most adult drivers reasonably well, but you get more front-seat head- and legroom in a Cadillac Lyriq or Rivian R1S.
That’s true because designers used sleight of hand to make this car look like an SUV but slip through the air like a coupe. Much of its roofline, viewed from the side, is false – a sleek greenhouse made to look blockier than it is thanks to a clever wing that makes the profile visually square but functionally sleek. The illusion cheats you of some headroom.
The central touchscreen controls most infotainment functions, but a touch-sensitive panel beneath it lets you control climate functions without paging through a menu. An unusual steering wheel – almost octagonal – feels interesting and sporty in your hands, but blocked my view of the volume knob. Annoying.
That sparse layout is common in EVs. If you don’t opt for the available passenger’s side screen, however, in its place sits a big expanse of glossy black plastic that begs to get scratched over years of ownership. You’ll need to be careful.
Faux leather seats feel enough like the real thing that I had to check the order sheet to be sure. Silver piping lends it a sporty air.
Limitations
This may well be the least off-road-worthy vehicle Jeep has ever built. Ground clearance is just under six-and-a-half inches, and, though the approach angle is quite good, the rest of the geometry doesn’t lend itself to the usual Jeeping.
Key Considerations
Manufacturers are still figuring out how to price electric SUVs. This one’s starting point remains considerably higher than that of the Lyriq or the soon-to-be-discontinued Acura ZDX.
That’s a bit odd for a Jeep product. But, as a pretend food critic forcing an analogy, my job here is to tell you that the McDonald’s filet mignon is quite good for the price. Someone at McDonald’s has the job of justifying their decision to sell it at the drive-through.
