Don’t Perform Uconnect Update: A Warning to Jeep Wrangler 4xe Owners
The Uconnect update released on October 10 causes critical power failures in Jeep Wrangler 4xe.
Before I began writing about the automotive industry professionally, I spent many years in the information technology world. One of the golden rules was to never deploy new code on a Friday. Apparently, the folks at Jeep never heard of that rule. Did anyone test the latest Uconnect update before rolling it out? It sure doesn’t seem that way. A Uconnect update was made available on Friday, October 10. Jeep Wrangler 4xe owners are reporting that when they installed the update it caused their vehicle to lose power and become undriveable.
A video was recently posted on the Jeeps On The Run YouTube channel showing the issue occurring in real time. The owner of the Jeep Wrangler 4xe in the video had his vehicle lose power three times in less than 1 mile. Not good. And because the update was pushed on a Friday, many issues were not realized until outside of normal business hours over the weekend. Yikes.
What Happened?
Over-the-air (OTA) updates are supposed to make it more convenient to own a vehicle. You can get important upgrades without having to run to the dealer. However, this Uconnect update was anything but convenient as owners were left with a bricked vehicle. Stories of these issues quickly spread all over social media. As you can imagine, having a fairly new Jeep that could cost north of $60,000 strand you on the side of the road is not going to make people very happy. Jeeps were losing power while driving, dashboard lights were coming on, and owners were forced to have their Jeeps towed to dealerships.
The Fix
According to a report by Cars.com, once Jeep engineers became aware of the problem, they cancelled the update. Unfortunately, by then it was too late as many owners already upgraded. On Saturday night an interim OTA fix was pushed that restored the Uconnect software back to the previous version. Owners had to make sure their Jeep was parked in an area with good cell coverage. The Jeep then had tobe left on for at least ten minutes. Then owners were advised to turn the vehicle off and back on, as well as check to see that there is no code or fault in the instrument cluster. As of this writing, the Jeep team is still working on a permanent solution.
Damage
This is obviously an embarrassing moment for Jeep. Their software update not only stranded owners but put them in potentially hazardous situations. For the sake of all Wrangler 4xe owners hopefully Jeep learned from this mistake. Technology is great until it isn’t. Don’t deploy new code on a Friday. Does anyone else miss the good old 4.0L inline-six engine? It might not have the power and efficiency of the plug-in hybrid 4xe powerplant. But it never bricked itself either.
Images: Stellantis
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