Here’s a pretty terrifying fact if you’re a marketer for Jeep: out of the top 33 car brands selling cars in the United States, Jeep’s sales growth is at the absolute bottom, meaning that there are 32 brands ahead of them (can you even name 32 car brands?). In a market where almost every brand is growing, Jeep has lost 12% of sales compared to 2022, which itself was a dismal year. This comes after four consecutive years of sales declines for Jeep. What can be done?
Nostalgia! I don’t usually talk about marketing here, though it does fascinate me. Jeep is, potentially, a super strong brand, but it hasn’t been lately. The approach Stellantis is taking to fix it is an interesting one and I want to talk about it first. There’s also some news out of Mercedes in the form of a “Baby g” as well as updates on Toyota’s fuel cell projects and a look at the overall chip supply.
Check Out The ‘Dents’ On This Jeep
I’ve discussed, at length, the challenges Jeep is currently facing. On the one hand, the PHEV 4XE vehicles have been a surprising sales success. On the other hand, the overall product mix for Jeep doesn’t seem to be resonating with the larger market. Plus, competition from Ford and its Bronco line of vehicles is giving the Wrangler its first real test in decades.
Jeep, ultimately, has a product problem. Perhaps the new 2024 Jeep Wrangler is good (we haven’t reviewed it yet). Still, a mildly refreshed 2024 Wrangler is not going to suddenly turn the brand’s fortunes around.
Just look at this sales report from FCA:
There’s the Jeep brand through the first half of 2023. It ain’t pretty. YTD the best performing vehicle is the Compass, which appears to be heavily incentivized (the brand is currently offering 15% off MSRP). Literally every other vehicle is declining year-over-year.
In my humble opinion, the Wagoneer/Grand Wagoneer has not broken into the big SUV space to truly challenge Ford and GM. The Renegade is old and hard to swallow at almost any price. If you want a Jeep Wrangler there’s no better Jeep Wrangler than a Jeep Wrangler, but depending upon the price, you might be better off buying a Bronco Sport than just about any of their small crossover/SUVs (or a Chevy Trax or Kia Seltos, if you don’t need/want the off-road chops).
The Grand Cherokee is good and, if you work for Jeep, the rebound in Q2 is hopeful.
Product problems are hard to fix and it takes years, not days, to fix them. You know what you can fix in days? Marketing. Marketing will always exist to fix product problems.
A story in Automotive News caught my eye this morning, because the reporter there spoke with Stellantis marketing head Olivier Francois to find out exactly what the brand is trying to accomplish. The campaign is called “Dents” and it’s dripping with nostalgia. Just look at the video at the top of this section. Look at all the memories created by one Jeep! Look at the family! Listen to the smarmy, Mumford & Sons-y song!
From the article:
Olivier Francois, marketing chief for Jeep parent Stellantis, said the ad’s focus is building loyalty rather than conquesting buyers.
Francois said the time was right for a Grand Cherokee campaign as dealership inventory grows. He said the nameplate has logged millions of sales since 1992 and has a place in the hearts of many.
“This is an extended approach to loyalty,” Francois told reporters last week. “Literally a new generation, cross-generational loyalty to the vehicle, and this will allow us to add an emotional and nostalgic level of connection with the customer.”
As Peter pointed out in Slack, this is basically the same ad Subaru ran, with essentially the same song, back in 2017:
I mean, I work with a crazy person who is spending a lot of time and money putting together the ultimate Jeep Grand Cherokee so maybe this is going to work on Jeep people.
They Call Me ‘Baby g’
Speaking of beloved off-road brands… for years, Mercedes has apparently considered making a smaller G-Class. Instead, Mercedes built the more family-friendly GLB, which is a completely fine and forgettable crossover thing.
It sounds like we’re finally going to get the baby-G.
“Tonight, we are announcing for all the G-Fans out there, there will be a little g,” Mercedes CEO Källenius told Bloomberg at the Munich car show, adding “So a son or daughter of the iconic G.”
This makes a lot of sense to me. A smaller, cheaper, boxy Gelandewagen can trade on the brand’s iconic shape. While there’s no timing that’s been announced, it’s clear from Mercedes that this new itty-bitty-g will be all-electric.
Microchip Shortage Update: North America FTW!
The ongoing microchip shortage has had an outsized impact on the car market in the United States, but our fortunes are improving. According to Automotive News/Auto Forecast Solutions, the number of vehicles that had to be delayed due to chips shortages in North America fell to only around 4,700 last week.
That’s not zero, but it’s a big improvement from August of last year, when around 22,300 vehicles were cut in a week according to the same data set. Things are still rough in Asia, where non-Chinese plants lost 43,157 vehicles and Chinese plants lost an additional 19,669 production slots.
Toyota’s Long Beach Port Operations Now Powered By Hydrogen
If you go to the Port of Long Beach complex and find Toyota’s section you’ll see something quite interesting. Rising out of a massive concrete field is a strange collection of metal tubes, machinery, and tanks that at once looks familiar and somehow new.
This is a hydrogen “Tri-Gen” powerplant, built by the company FuelCell Energy, and it now powers Toyota’s port operations. Using renewable biogas (i.e., natural gas created by decomposing biomatter), the facility produces electricity, hydrogen, and usable water.
The energy will help power Toyota’s equipment, the hydrogen will be used for Toyota hydrogen vehicles, and the water will be used in the company’s car wash operations. The water part is quite interesting and should, according to Toyota, reduce water supplies by about half a million gallons per year.
While I’m still not convinced that we’ll all be driving hydrogen cars in a few years, these kinds of industrial projects make a lot of sense to me. Obviously, there are limits on how much biogas can be produced, but taking methane released from landfills and preventing it from becoming a greenhouse gas is a powerful idea.
The Big Question
It’s Thursday. It’s been a long week. Here’s an easy one for you: How would you save Jeep?
Photos: Toyota, Jeep
What can save Jeep? The bare basic, not logical answer: Keep the Wrangler, Wrangler Unlimited, and the Grand Cherokee only. Whore out the Grand Cherokee to get platform mates to minimize production costs, and the Wrangler and Wrangler Unlimited get health priorities to always keep upgrading them to better outmaneuver any competition.
My actual answer is reprioritizing the brands line-up;
Elsewise, I’d make customization another top priority. Keep offering accessories but make the Jeeps more plug and play.
That’s actually a really cool idea. I’m not sure how well it would sell, but I think it would be cool. It would fill a niche that currently only Land Rover has with the Defender 130.
Jeep had a 3-row concept a couple years back based on the Gladiator and I imminently thought to myself “why wouldn’t you try to produce that?”
If anything, that’s something you could probably make a lot of profit with.
Edit: that 3-row concept is called the Jeep Wrangler Overlook.
This. Save the really nice 4×4 hardware for the Grand Cherokee and make Dodge and Chrysler versions to appeal to other markets.
The fact it took them 18 years from the original Grand Cherokee to the WK2 Grand Cherokee blows my mind.
First off, I love the stupidity of nostalgia. Remember the 85 CJ-7 you had (I do), remember how you worked on it every other weekend because it was basically falling apart (I do) remember how your girlfriend had a 85 Toyota pickup that just ran and ran (I do). Now, don’t you want to buy a Jeep (I don’t).
The Jeep issue is really being WAY behind other automakers in bringing to market what people want. Gladiator with no 4XE powertrain? Is there a difference between a Cherokee and a Compass? They look the same to me. Hello Grand Wagoneer, we already have the Escalade, GX and Navigator. Seems like Jeep is adrift with no direction.
“Buy a Jeep because you already have a Jeep”. Yup that’s a winner.
I had no idea the Cherokee/grand Cherokee was still being built and had to google it for a picture as I can’t recall noticing any on the road.
I’m sure the Wagoneer is a fine vehicle but if I was looking to spend Wagoneer money on a large SUV I’m not sure I would even consider it as an option. There are too many better alternatives in the large SUV segment.
and yet, I see Cherokee/grand Cherokees all the time on the road.
I’m sure that I’ve seen them, just don’t recall noticing one.
I thought that, but now I realize they could have been Compasses.
They’re good looking vehicles, but there’s really not a reason for them to exist anymore. At least back in the day the first and second gens had legit offroad capability, the new ones are basically crossovers now.
Whenever I see one I always think that it’s nice looking, but too expensive for what you get. Just buy a Highlander.
I’m really kind of surprised so many here are so down on the Wagoneer/GW.
I get that the styling is not as clean as it could be, but I find it pretty blandly inoffensive. It was never going to be the 80s GW.
In any case, an expensive vehicle based off a less expensive one is exactly what companies need to fund development of other vehicles, powertrains, etc, so cancelling it would seem to be counterproductive? I’ve not yet driven a Hurricane-equipped vehicle, so I’ll withhold final judgment, but I do think the decision to drop the V8 completely was risky.
A friend of mine is a Jeep/Ram tech. He claims the Wagoneer/GW is the least reliable vehicle he’s ever seen before.
Any details on what they are coming in for? The 6.4 powertrain I figured was pretty well sorted by now, so is it electronic stuff/gadgets?
Can’t remember entirely; but I think most of it was electrical related.
all the complaints i’ve read (and only internet complainers, so take that with a truckload of sodium chloride) but it’s pretty much electrical systems failures.
The interior looks nice, but the exterior is so bland that I actually DO find it offensive. Plus it’s just too big, too dumb, too expensive. It’s a good 20 years too late.
It is inexplicably late (Why did Ford start building a Tahoe/Suburban competitor in 1997, and FCA only in 2022?), but it’s no bigger, dumber, or more expensive than its competitors.
I suppose if one is biased (as many here seem to be) against the whole class of full-size truck-based SUVs, there might be a reason to hate the GW. But I don’t personally understand it.
I actually LIKE big truck based SUV’s. Perhaps I think this one is dumb just because of how late to the party it is. Size wise, I’ve seen a few in the wild and to me they look a little larger than the equivalent Tahoe/Suburban. Maybe it’s just the styling that makes it look larger than it is.
I really like the original Waggy, so maybe that’s why I can’t warm up to this one. I see a few daily, and they are downright TINY compared to the current one. In retrospect it’s comical that those were referred to as “Full sized Jeeps” back in the day.
There’s an LL Bean knockoff clothing store in my town, the owner seems to think he and his wife are JFK and Jackie reincarnate, and they have a new Waggy in navy with woodgrain on the side. It’s more interesting, yet also even worse, than the stock one.
Now I’m curious where you can see multiple originals daily. Here in the Midwest I honestly don’t think I’ve seen a single one for a decade or more.
Seeing an OG Wagoneer daily sounds like a treat
It really is, it makes me smile every time I walk by.
Can we post images here? I’ll snap a pic of you guys.
A beach town in RI. On my afternoon walk with my dog, I typically see 3 of them; two are rough drivers, one looks pretty clean, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been restored at least once. Incidentally, there’s also a new Rivian R1S parked at that house as well. Best of both worlds. I can also think of two others I’ve seen around town, for a total of 5.
Car spotting here is fun 🙂
I’d have to imagine part of the problem is how they branded it. While enthusiasts know the Wagoneer is more inline with a Tahoe or Excursion and the Grand Wagoneer is Escalade/Navigator; most people don’t and just see it as a Jeep Wagoneer. Jeep’s own recent history of using the Grand modifier usually means a bigger car, not a fancier trim with a bigger engine. They probably should have done something along the lines of [some different name like Commander]=Tahoe, Grand [some new name or Commander]=Suburban, Wagoneer=Escalade, Grand Wagoneer=Escalade ESV.
On top of that, why the hell does the differentiating the styling between lowly Wagoneer look exactly like the luxury Grand Wagoneer? GM and Ford learned to push harder on styling differentiations of different market segments like 15 years ago. How did Jeep miss that?
I’ll see the Archduke’s recommendation to bring the Avenger to the US, and I’ll raise him “sell a version with a small pickup bed, a la Maverick/Santa Cruz.” Jeep needs something that’s on trend and would attract attention, and a rugged-looking EV ute might be just the ticket.
Also, agree with the growing sentiment here that the next Cherokee-segment crossover should have the sort of “baby-Wrangler” look that’s made the Bronco Sport such a hit. This could replace the Cherokee and the Renegade, imho.
Styling aside, Stellantis’ decision to drop the “Jeep” name from the Wagoneer/Grand Wagoneer is baffling. Given the equity the Jeep name has around the world, why would you bring out a Jeep product that DOESN’T have the name on the hood? Maybe start with THAT.
Similar to Star Trek: Enterprise. The first two seasons were simply titled Enterprise. I guess they figured they had saddled the show with a garbage theme song that maybe they needed to identify it as a Star Trek show. Phase Cannons, polarized hull plating, T’Pol has normal eyebrows.
“T’Pol has normal eyebrows”
I didn’t think it was her eyebrows the fans were focused on.
Right, the Scott Bakula series.
Jeep overplayed their hand. Brand recognition is only going to take you so far if the products aren’t competitive…and nothing in Jeep’s lineup really is anymore except the Wrangler, and right now the Bronco is just cooler and more embedded in the consciousness of the normies who buy these sorts of products in droves.
Jeep’s powertrains are woefully outdated and they have too many goddamn models. They don’t need a Compass AND a Renegade. They don’t need a Grand Wagoneer, and maybe don’t even need any Wagoneer now that the Cherokee longboi finally exists. They don’t need the Gladiator, and they don’t need 9,000 different Wrangler variants.
They’re still selling a bunch of big, slow, gas guzzling vehicles during a time when climate change is on anyone with an IQ over room temperatures’ mind…and they’re in even deeper shit now that the Asian brands are coming into the boxy SUV space with more modern powertrains. Who in their right mind is going to want a Pentestar powered GC over the new hybrid Land Cruiser? Or the new hybrid Santa Fe that’s probably going to undercut it by 5-10,000?
They needed to just straight up axe several models yesterday and put more of their eggs in the electrification basket. The Wagoneer, Renegade, and Gladiator need to be taken out to pasture. The godforsaken Pentestar needs to be replaced with a detuned variant of the Hurricane 6. Hybridize all the things. Etc.
They’re pretty fucked right now though and I don’t see an easy way out of it. When you have hundreds of cars sitting on lots with piles of money on the hood (in my area Grand Cherokees are selling for as much as $10-15,000 off sticker) you’re in deep.
And okay, the GLB didn’t need to catch a stray in this article. The GLB is actually a ridiculously useful package. It’s essentially a van with regular doors and offers a metric fuck ton of usable space and a third row. It’s also way more stylish than most of its egg shaped competitors and there’s even an AMG Lite variant that’s apparently a hoot. If you need a hauler and want a luxury badge you could do a whole hell of a lot worse. I’ve said it a few times before and I’ll keep saying it-the GLB is slept on and it’s essentially a van space wise.
A baby G, you say? They won’t be able to keep it on lots. The G Wagon is one of those cars that’s just embedded into pop culture and the minds of normies the world apart, but it’s ludicrously expensive. If they can somehow have it start in the 50s I think it’ll be a runaway hit…but alas, it’s an EV? Ehhhhh not so fast.
Mercedes EVs suck ass. They’re dystopian tech nightmares with downright satirically gaudy styling for no reason at all. They’re essentially cars designed by and for influencers. Ridiculously overpriced, over complicated rubbish that’s designed to be used for a year or two then discarded like a cellphone.
Another expensive electric crossover ain’t gonna do shit but sit on lots and give us piles of electronic waste to deal with down the road. I’m sure there will be some $499 lease special on it within a few months when they don’t sell. BORING! If it was a hybrid I’d be intrigued, but alas….
Jeep wants loyalty hmm? Well you know how most every first world country has mandated BEVs by X date, then Jeep says here are 3 electric “Jeeps”
All 3 are European 4 door independent suspension having unibody CUVs with Jeep badges and fake Jeep grills slapped on them….
The First mass production civilian BEV Jeep (Jeep made the DJ-5E for the post office) should be the the original Jeep Magneto Concept which is basically an electric motor swapped stick shift Wrangler.
If Jeep wants loyalty then they need to keep making Jeeps. BEVs don’t have to worry about the footprint rule, minimum MPG requirements, etc.
I’d save Jeep by making Jeeps and adopting a Jeep first mentality which includes tons of customization options when you buy your new Jeep, not paywalls forcing you to get a Rubicon to have Dana 44s for example. Secondly Jeep Wrangler Magneto, Thirdly I’d work on developing ultra small range extender engines as an option for future Jeep BEV products because aero is not your friend when you’re driving a Jeep. I’d do everything in my power to keep Jeeps around and support Jeep driving people, possibly even restart production on hard to find old Jeep parts. That’s how you save Jeep
Jeep will never be a “refined” experience, and attempting to do so will only kill what makes a Jeep a Jeep.
I’d zig where others have zagged and introduce the Jeep Catera…
Seriously, though, with so many CUV/SUV’s on the market, Jeep is getting lost in the mix. Most of the competition covers a lot of what Jeep offers, so what was unique a few years ago is less so now. My idea would be to “Subaru-ize” the Jeep lineup by adding an Outback-style wagon, better pickup trucks than the Tonka toy known as the Gladiator, and even a rally-style vehicle. You can still keep the Wrangler and at most two larger SUV’s–I’d rename the Grand Cherokee into something that doesn’t reference a cancelled model–but the rest would be fair game.
Love the Catera reference. A decent argument could be made that Cherokee is head to head with Forester, Compass goes against Outback and Renegade goes against the CrossTrek.
As a Crosstrek owner I would have never considered a Renegade… Maybe a Compass in the same segment. The Cherokee is the Outback competitor.
Personally I wouldn’t cross shop any of the pairs you suggested. I guess it’s just my bias. But I believe that with the exception of the Cherokee, all of those Jeep models are thoughtless rebadges and are not “want” vehicles. They’re “good enough” and often sold with discounts. I think the Subarus are popular because of their practical fun lifestyle approach. My opinion only.
That’s fair. They are not necessarily viable competitors, but in theory they go head-to-head on price, features and size.
Jeep’s problem is their cars are too expensive. I looked into the possibility of a grand cherokee after being pleasantly surprised at a rental grand cherokee “L”. One look at MSRP and I was like, nope! Jeep shouldn’t been marketing cars that cost $60k plus. That space is luxury, not rugged outdoorsy.
Hasn’t Jeep had this problem for years-the wrangler and Grand Cherokee have a core audience and typically sell well, they’ve never managed to seriously branch out to other models-not least because they’re usually crap that relies entirely on brand recognition. Not managing to come up with a forward thinking replacement for the original XJ Cherokee seems like (hindsight being what it is) one of the all time corporate fumbles.
If Suzuki can build the Jimny, why can Jeep offer something similar?
I’ve said for a while that the Suzuki Samurai was a Picasso moment of US car culture.
It wasn’t fully appreciated until it was gone.
However, the reality is a lot of manufacturers right now have no appetite for low margin cars, and even if you made it upscale, American mostly think, “small = bad.” So outside of the enthusiasts buying them in the first two years, sales would likely fall hard afterwards and stay there.
Jeep needs to get it prices lower. To appeal to younger people the need a wrangler that starts in the high 20s. Stop diluting the brand with all the small crossovers
I agree. Jeeps are expensive. $40k starting price for a 2wd Grand Cherokee that has a 13 year old V6 and musters 22pmg is bad. Mazda will give you a TT I6 and AWD standard for that money. Honda will give you those numbers for way cheaper and have reliability. Toyota is probably gonna stomp on that with the new 4Runner or Land Cruiser.
But even worse than the entry level stuff is the high spec stuff Jeep is trying to peddle. A decked out Grand Cherokee pushing $70k or more and still come with that old, outdated engine. Everyone else in that price range gives you way better, more powerful, or more fuel efficient engines. You’ve got to really really like Jeeps to get a fully loaded Grand Cherokee over something like a similarly priced Defender, X5, or GX.
And I’m perfectly fine with small crossovers. Some of Jeeps most memorable stuff are small crossover type SUVs. See the XJ or Jeepster. Jeep just needs to make actual good ones though.
Maybe Jeep would be doing better if they updated their mainstream product lines more than once a decade.
To me, it seems like Jeep needs a better CUV/small SUV lineup. The Renegade is ancient, and the Compass…I can’t think of anything interesting about it, but it is selling (yes I know it has been discounted) relatively well by the looks of those numbers. Look what Ford did with the Bronco Sport. It’s outselling the Escape by a considerable margin despite being the same car underneath the retro styling, and not being anywhere near as off-road capable as the Bronco itself Idk, maybe a “Wrangler Sport?” It would piss off the purists but I bet it would sell.
I don’t feel like talking about marketing because I work at an advertising agency and am fed up with the whole fucking industry.
I really think this is the #1 thing they could do.
A Wrangler Sport would be a great idea, but only if they can build one on par with the Bronco Sport. Small Jeep vehicles thus far have been forgettable at best. I’m not sure what the problem is, but they can’t seem to build one that is desirable.
Style it as a “Wrangler Sport” but call it the XJ and make the top trim “Cherokee”
Imagine if the Cherokee was effectively a “Wrangler Sport” – and introduced 5 years ago, when the KL was starting to get moldy, and set to get a major redesign next year.
Why, they might even be competitive in a popular market segment if they did that.
It feels like “brand built on nostalgia decides to try nostalgia to sell product.” But also feels exactly the way Subaru does it, with showing the old Subaru in the ad getting passed down to the kids. And also dogs.
Grand Cherokees have a cachet and will always be desired, like the 4Runner. Wagoneer I think they thought it would be an easier sell on the name but it’s a segment of loyal buyers and there are people that keep their large SUVs for a long time, so people aren’t in a hurry to trade out anyway.
They need updated product in the small/compact crossover space where the real volume is. The newest is the Compass and that first debuted nearly 7 years ago. It hit me recently that the KL Cherokee now a 10-year-old basic design, their oldest. It’s surprising because (ignoring things like reliability or whether or not it’s a “real Jeep” and such, looking more at features and specs) it was exactly the right product for the time in the compact crossover class when new. Now everyone else is going to be on a second or even third redesign by the time something new hits.
But what do they have to swap in there quickly? Rebody the Hornet? Which already looks like something they’d have put out 10 years ago? And its powertrains aren’t quite the heart of the market right now either.
Not a Jeep guy. I have studied them in College. From my research Jeep people like two things rust, and rubber ducks. So, we build the Wrangler like normal. Then insert straight into Chesapeake Bay. Let air dry. Then fill with small rubber ducks. Boom! Sales success.
Also Hellcat the Compass you cowards!
How to save Jeep:
^ might as well just forward this list to Jeep, I agree with all of this except for (maybe) the 2 door Gladiator. I’d love to see a 2 door gladiator, it’s just that I don’t think it would sell in enough volumes to justify.
The problem with the Gladiator is that it’s just too fucking long, and a 2-door would make it look proportional.
Make it a long bed too and the only new part is the bed pretty much, it could still fit on the same frame as the standard 4 door. They have 2 and 4 door wranglers, I can’t imagine it would take much in R&D costs to make it happen.
Again, it would be cool to see a single cab Gladiator, but it probably won’t make financial sense for Jeep because:
“ Almost 85% of pickup sales are crew-cabs in 2020. In Canada, it’s almost 90%. When it comes to extended-cab pickups they’re selling at 14% of total sales. Regular-cabs amount to about three percent. “
Why? Because people like having at least an extended cab to put gear, groceries, people, pets, etc…
Also within the work truck world (think utility trucks, etc..) regular cabs are falling out of favor because of the reasons above AND because of the perception of safety. It’s viewed as safer to not have a piece of glass right behind your head in an accident. I didn’t make this up, it’s from plenty of convos with work truck customers and upfitters.
I kinda hope I’m wrong though, and they do build a regular cab Gladiator, at least in small numbers.
I completely agree it would sell in very small numbers, and is probably not really worth the effort, but I do not envision a regular cab, I still see it as an extended cab. The current gladiator is basically a 4 door wrangler with the cargo area chopped off and replaced with a bed. Do the same with the 2 door wrangler, so it maintains a small back seat, but then has the bed on the back. In the same way that the 4 door wrangler outsells the 2 door 10:1, I would expect it to be similar for the Gladiator, but realistically it would take such a small amount of development, and likely no new equipment, so it could be worth it even if the takers are few and far between. It’s more just fun to think about though, no chance they will ever do it.
Call it the “Gladiator J10” and Jeep fans will line up for it.
And I’m on board with the Arch Duke’s list. Gladiator 4xe is supposedly in the works, so maybe progress?
The I6 needs to be put in the Grand Cherokee too. a $40k starting price and a 13 year old V6 isn’t competitive. As you climb the trim hierarchy, you still get the same mediocre engine but nearly double the price of the dang thing.
You nailed it.
RE: Toyota hydrogen-
People love to poo-poo hydrogen, but this is yet another sign that in the long run, it will probably achieve at least parity with BEVs, and in many applications probably be the dominant, or even sole form of energy storage.
One of the slow-burn-but-big-impact stories that is currently developing is that within the next 10-15 years, commercial aviation is going to either ‘voluntarily’ or by regulatory force be required to phase out conventional fossil fuels for all new aircraft designs. Barring a Nobel-prize level miraculous leap in energy density (ie on the order of a 10x improvement over current state of the art), batteries are not even remotely close to a viable option for airliners, which means you have two options: sustainable aviation fuels / efuels /biogas, and hydrogen. SAF has the benefit of being mostly compatible with existing aircraft fuel and propulsion systems, but is roughly 3-5x as expensive as Jet A, and offers no distinct advantages in performance. Hydrogen on the other hand, while a serious engineering challenge to tank, has a much higher energy density compared to Jet A and assuming you’re tanking cryogenic fuel (which you should) there are some extremely interesting options for greatly increasing engine performance via precooling and boundary layer ingestion.
Long story short- don’t be surprised when you get on an airliner in 20 years and it’s running off hydrogen.
RE: Jeep- As a brand, they’ve never spoken to me, just don’t see the appeal. Wranglers seem to be quite popular as offroad toys, but I’m not sure if you can keep a company afloat on that.
Once you have a tri-gen fuel cell that makes electricity, hydrogen, and HEAT it becomes relatively simple to use the heat as an input to make a drop in fuel.
I had a very different response to this. I think this sort of limited use is where hydrogen will fit well, but it also shines a light on the biggest problem with hydrogen: producing it. The way Toyota is getting their hydrogen does not scale well, just like every other method I’m aware of (except nuclear, which has a whole raft of problems itself). It’s also not clear to me that this is better than just burning the biogas directly, which it sounds like they’re also doing to produce, you guessed it, electricity.
Sure, you can generate enough hydrogen to run a single facility, but can you scale that to cover the needs of the entire airline industry? That has perpetually been the problem with hydrogen, and I don’t see any evidence that they’ve solved it here.
Well if you can generate enough hydrogen to run a single facility, then yes you certainly can scale to cover the needs of the entire airline industry, because the entire airline industry is run out of a number of discrete facilities that already have their own specialized ecosystem for on-site fueling, and airlines fly exclusively between such facilities. On-site hydrogen production requires only two inputs- water and electricity. Naturally this will be a rather expensive initial investment, but frankly so was the entire petrochemical industry. If you want to provide the motive backbone for an industrial economy, it doesn’t come cheap.
By the way, this isn’t like a pipe dream- the first hydrogen power airliners are already flying test flights:
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/air-travel/the-first-hydrogen-powered-planes-are-taking-flight
The only question is the trade-space between SAF and hydrogen, and I’m pretty confident hydrogen wins in the long run.
So this certainly isn’t Toyota solving hydrogen production, but it is them continuing to develop their technical knowledge of using hydrogen, and example #85647 of them playing the smart, long game.
That’s an awful big problem to hand-wave away. You’ll note how even this facility is not using hydrolysis to get their hydrogen. It’s certainly a strategy to ignore the infrastructure requirements of a given powertrain, but we can see how that’s working out for BEVs. Tesla, who did give a lot of thought to it, is dominating. The other manufacturers, who just assumed someone else would solve the problem, are falling all over themselves to get in on Tesla’s network.
I’ll believe hydrogen is the future when someone solves the entire supply chain in a sustainable and scalable fashion. I have yet to see that.
You’re missing several points. You are expecting hydrogen implementation to be like fossil fuels where they will be adopted for used across all transportation modes and require a corresponding universal infrastructure and supply chain to support them. We are obviously a very long way from that happening with hydrogen. However, in the limited and specific case of commercial aerospace, we are very close to it happening in the next few decades. This is because there is immense pressure from regulatory bodies worldwide for commercial aviation to cut its emissions to carbon neutral (nevermind that there are a number of much better “low hanging fruits” for this pressure, grumble grumble coal plants, bunker fuel, disposable consumer goods). If you want your airliner to be carbon neutral, you only have two options: SAF and H2, and in the long run the technical advantages in energy density and thermal efficiency of H2 make it the better choice.
Solving the supply chain is simple- there is no supply chain. Hydrogen will be produced on-site, and consumed on-site. Inputs are water and electricity, and the consumer is the airliner that just pulled up to the gate a few hundred yards away. You will not need to drill your dino juice out of a far-off country in a politically unstable region, pump it through a massive continent spanning pipeline network or ship it half way across the planet to a refinery, and from there into trucks, trains, and more ships to reach distribution centers, and then finally to the end user.
Sustainability is also simple- it’s the same as your source of electricity. Dirty power in = dirty hydrogen out, green power in = green hydrogen out. They can build a solar farm in Dubai, geothermal in Iceland, go crazy and do tidal power in San Francisco, and nuclear in Paris.
Scalability too, is simple- once again it’s the same as your source of electricity, multiplied by .5 to .6 hit in conversion efficiencies. As your power supply increases in capacity, so does your hydrogen generation capacity. I admit I am going to hand wave the assumption that any facility capable of securing thousands of tons of highly refined and flammable jet fuel each and every day is probably capable of securing the equivalent mass in plain water, given they are usually connected to municipal supplies of it.
Now, does all of this work for applications that are not commercial aviation? Of course not- but it is a start.
Thanks for the well-written and informative response. I’d agree with the case you present for commercial aviation likely being the best place for hydrogen fueling to become a reality on a mass scale.
I think our fundamental disagreement here is that you believe massive amounts of green electricity production is a given. I think you’re underestimating that problem by an order of magnitude. I guess time will tell which of us is right.
Technically there is no burning in a fuel cell.
https://www.fuelcellenergy.com/blog/how-does-a-fuel-cell-work/
I agree that hydrogen is one of the more promising options for aviation. I’m not convinced this Toyota venture is big news for hydrogen-powered aviation.
This tri-gen plant relies on waste digesters for biogas. Let’s say for the sake of argument that you actually solve the anaerobic digester’s oversensitivity to feedstock quality and you start producing biomethane at sufficient scale to supply the aviation industry. You just made massive amounts of carbon-neutral biofuel. Why would anyone bother blasting the CH4 into H2 (and dealing with leakage, embrittlement, and punishingly low liquefaction temperature) when they could just cut out the middleman and run their planes on LNG directly?
Biogas produced by the digester is biomethane mixed with carbon dioxide. The upgrading process to produce biomethane requires energy and capital. The tri-gen fuel cell replaces this separation process. It also makes carbon capture easier and could capture carbon from an additional flue gas source at the same time it removes it from biogas.
Simple- energy density. LH2 has approximately 2.5 times the mass energy density of CH4. And because the energy consumption of an aircraft at a fixed cruising speed scales with mass as the doubling of a square, energy density is a big, big, big deal. This is also why battery airliners are not feasible with current battery tech.
Also, while the cryogenic aspect of LH2 is a major pain, it also enables a whole new corner of the propulsion performance envelope via ingestion precooling.
Nostalgia? Loyalty? In other words, follow in Harley’s footsteps and reach the same place where the customers with memories and loyalties and money die off.
HD was the first thing I thought of when I read the headline. Their numbers peaked about a decade ago and they don’t seem to have half a clue what to do about it.
The main difference is, I think, Jeep has been trying to branch out into products with more mass appeal that still have the Jeep feel to it.
As some others have pointed out, all of these products were sub-par when compared to the competition and too compromised to be a “real Jeep.”
I think most of the people that might be in the market for a Compass or Renegade probably do not care about the Jeep image at all and chose one of the other products available.
They likely sold to almost everyone that wanted the Jeep image without wanting the Wrangler or Cherokee for whatever reason. Jeep’s mistake was in overestimating how many of those types of shoppers existed.
Save Jeep. Make a car that doesn’t rust out if you look at it funny. Also go back the older designed, think Challenger, Mustang, Camaro refresh.
Jeep seemed to have something when it sold just the wrangler, cherokee and grand cherokee. Spreading the line into cars that cannot off road diluted the brand.
I feel like
and
From the first article might be editor’s notes accidentally left in?
Oh you can see that too? Whew.
Not anymore hahaha
Sunova!
We had a weird autosave issue. We published the wrong draft!
Won’t happen again!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Shit happens, and hey, I’m no morning person myself so I get it. Compared to any newspaper I’ve ever read you guys are better researched and make like 1% of the typos/editing bloopers.
Not a huge deal. I just kept thinking you were asking us (the readers) and thought it was a link I kept trying to hit with my fat fingers.
Yup! We had some sort of saving issue or my brain broke and I saved over David’s edits. It’s a process! We actually review these things before we publish.
I actually liked the editor notes like that, it adds an MST3000 vibe
I was thinking the same, kinda peels back the covers for an inside look
Editor notes for leather edition readers.
How would I save Jeep? Start making a quality product that people want. Making cars is hard, but figuring out what makes a car company successful is not.
Or make a product that people can AFFORD. Wrangler and Grand Cherokees are nice, but ridiculously expensive.
Why not both?
Maybe it’s because the new models look like dogsh*t.
Seriously, does anyone look at the new Grand Cherokee and think it looks better than old one? The Grand Wagoneer is a monstrosity, and anyone spending that kind of cash is definitely looking at a Range Rover unless they absolutely, completely, 100% need to have the biggest vehicle on the road.
Could not disagree with you more on the Grand Cherokee. It looks amazing.
The new one? I agree the previous generation was one of the better looking SUVs, but hot damn is the new one bland. It could be a crossover from anyone.
Yes, the new one. I love the way it looks and I don’t think it looks like anything else to me. Full disclosure, I liked it so much I bought one.
Well, I don’t understand why people buy current BMWs either, so maybe I’m not with the times.
YES. The new Grand is 100% much better looking than the previous model.
I do tend to prefer the old one outside, but the new one mostly looks like a leaner version of the old to me. I think the main difference is the new one seems to be more dependent on the wheels and trim, especially comparing base Laredos where the old looked better. That could possibly be due to the larger faux-grille/foglight surrounds in the new one?