That Klausen Pass Scare: When My 4xe Lost Power Mid-Climb

If you’ve been following along, you know my Wrangler 4xe hasn’t had the smoothest few months. After the recent charging system error, the dealer performed two software updates. Charging has been reliable ever since — but the intermittent ECH cabin heating fault is still there, and now I’ve got a new, more serious issue to report.

The Klausen Pass Incident

I’d had eSave active for most of the drive, but switched it off just before the climb up the Klausenstrasse and selected full Electric mode to take on the mountain. Partway up, the vehicle suddenly lost power. I had to hit the hazard lights immediately, as the car behind me had to brake hard to avoid a collision.

After about a minute, power briefly returned — only to disappear again. This time, flooring the accelerator did nothing at all. Worse, the vehicle actually began to slow down, as if it were regenerating instead of accelerating. Switching over to Hybrid mode finally got me moving again.

A New Symptom Since the Update

Switching between electric and combustion power in Hybrid mode is normal behavior for the 4xe. What isn’t normal is the lag I’m now seeing since the software updates: a kickdown that used to respond instantly now takes 3–5 seconds of nothing before the power suddenly kicks in. That delay simply wasn’t there before.

Where Things Stand

This is no longer just a comfort issue like the heating — losing propulsion mid-climb on a mountain pass, with traffic behind me, is a genuine safety concern. I’ve sent the workshop a detailed report of the incident, referencing the earlier TSB work and asking for another inspection. My suspicion is that the two software updates fixed the charging problem but didn’t address the underlying issue — and may have introduced this new power delivery behavior in the process.

If you’re driving a 4xe and have noticed similar power delivery lag after a dealer software update, I’d be curious to hear about it. This saga clearly isn’t over yet — I’ll post an update once I hear back from the workshop. For more background on the ongoing electrical gremlins, see my post on Recall 21D.

Update 16.07.2026: What’s Behind It

I now know what’s behind this. There was an update tied to the 68C recall that my garage either didn’t have access to at the time or simply didn’t install. When the charging system error came up, two software updates were installed at once — and one of those two was that overdue 68C-related update. The Klausen Pass incident started right after, caused by one of these two updates. The garage has since read out the car, found no stored fault codes, and confirmed all updates are now fully installed. They’re forwarding the case to Jeep as a safety concern, and I’m also contacting Jeep/Stellantis directly to push for a fix.