2025 Jeep Avenger review: Australian first drive

Jeep is known for large, hardcore SUVs capable of travelling far off-road, but the brand’s first electric car – the 2025 Jeep Avenger – is far from that.

The Avenger is a pint-sized city SUV with a similar footprint to a Toyota Yaris Cross – and slightly larger than a five-door Suzuki Jimny – with front-wheel drive and a claimed range on a charge of close to 400km.

It arrived in European showrooms 18 months ago, but is only now reaching local roads as Jeep Australia had to convince head office the car was right for our market – followed by time needed to engineer it to meet Australian motor-vehicle regulations.

Has it been worth the wait? Drive was invited to northern NSW for a first drive of the Avenger on local roads, after sampling it in Italy earlier this year.

The Avenger was initially scheduled to arrive priced from $53,990 plus on-road costs, but pre-launch cuts of $3000 to $4000 – depending on variant – now see the range open from $49,990 plus on-road costs.

That price is for the entry-level Longitude. The Limited starts from $54,990, while the Summit is priced from $60,990.

Jeep Australia says it did not remove equipment from the car to lower the price, but rather had a reduction in production costs which it elected to pass on to customers.

Despite the price drop, the 4.08m-long Avenger is still more expensive than larger SUVs it competes against.

A top-of-the-range BYD Atto 3 is $47,499, while the flagship Chery Omoda E5 is $45,990, and even the Leapmotor C10 – a larger SUV from a Chinese brand operated by Jeep’s parent company Stellantis – is priced from $45,888 to $49,888 (all before on-road costs).

The Avenger Limited is a similar price to the entry-level Tesla Model Y ($55,900) – a much larger vehicle with a longer range, more power and extra equipment – as well as the Smart #1 (from $54,900), Hyundai Kona Electric (from $54,000) and Renault Megane E-Tech (from $54,990).

Standard equipment in the Longitude includes 17-inch alloy wheels, reflector-beam LED headlights, a 10.25-inch infotainment touchscreen with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, 10.25-inch instrument display, fabric seats, push-button start, a rear-view camera and rear parking sensors.

The Limited adds cloth and synthetic leather-look seats, blind-spot monitoring, lane-centring assist, keyless entry, front and side parking sensors, wireless phone charging, satellite navigation, and more.

Exclusive to the Summit grade are 18-inch alloys, leather-accented seats, a power-adjustable driver’s seat, heated front seats, sunroof, projector LED headlights, LED tail-lights, privacy tint, black contrast roof, gloss black grille, and more.

The Jeep Avenger is the smallest electric SUV on sale in Australia, measuring 4084mm long, 1797mm wide, 1534mm tall and 2557mm in wheelbase. The cabin is, unsurprisingly, not the roomiest out there, but it’s more accommodating than you might expect.

There is plenty of space for taller drivers to get comfortable, with good head room under the Summit’s sunroof, tilt and reach adjustment in the steering column, and enough width for front occupants not to bang arms.

The front seats are comfortable on long journeys, with the Summit offering heating, leather-look trim, as well as six-way power adjustment, two-way lumbar and massaging on the driver’s side. Control of under-thigh support would be nice to have, though.

Jeep has opted for a relatively minimalist interior layout that’s big on storage, with a shelf on the dashboard, an open central area big enough to squish a backpack or handbag inside, a deep (although not very wide) centre console box, and modestly sized door pockets.

The company claims 26 litres of storage space around the cabin, though the cupholders in the centre console are placed low, and quite deep, so they’re hard to remove takeaway coffee cups from without the lid slipping off.

The glovebox is also small as the fuse box takes up most of the space. It is one of many elements of Peugeot DNA throughout this car – the Avenger is based on a Peugeot-developed platform, as part of the Stellantis group – and most of the interior switchgear comes from the French brand’s cars.

A traditional volume dial has been retained, as have buttons for key climate-control functions – such as air temperature and fan speed – but heated seat controls are routed through the touchscreen.

Soft leather-like materials have been used on the armrests – including a handy sliding centre armrest – but hard, scratchy plastics have been used nearly everywhere else to keep costs down. The black dashboard trim on the Longitude is replaced by silver on higher grades, but Australian models miss out on the yellow dashboard of European cars.

Amenities on the top-spec Summit include a wireless phone charger, keyless entry and start, one USB-A and one USB-C port, a sunroof, a heated windscreen, rain-sensing wipers, an auto-dimming rear-view mirror, and single-zone climate control.

Space in the rear is tight, given the Avenger’s compact body. Six-foot (183cm) adults can fit behind a six-foot driver or front passenger, but their knees will touch the seat ahead, and while head room is good, toe room can be a little tight with the front seats set low.

There are three rear seatbelts, but the narrow cabin means it won’t be very comfortable for the middle passenger, not helped by a large hump in the floor.

There are no rear air vents, fold-down armrest, cupholders or even any door pockets, but there’s a single USB-C port (though only in the Limited and Summit), two map pockets, ISOFIX anchors on the outboard seats, and three top-tether anchors.

Jeep quotes 355L of boot space, which is a respectable amount for such a small car, with a load height that’s not too far off the ground to load heavy items. It’s a wide space, with pockets on the sides, a light, bag hooks, and a two-position boot floor.

As with most electric cars, there is only a tyre repair kit, rather than a spare wheel.

Standard in the Jeep Avenger is a 10.25-inch infotainment touchscreen with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, embedded satellite navigation, and AM, FM and digital DAB+ radio.

Sourced from Peugeot, the system is initially confusing to operate – but will become easier to use over time – and isn’t the most responsive, often exhibiting a fair bit of lag between menus.

Most drivers will spend much of their time behind the wheel in Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and the former worked reliably on a wireless connection in our testing.

Shortcut buttons for the home screen and vehicle settings help minimise touches on the screen, as do the volume dial and climate-control shortcuts, though there are still many functions inside the screen, including the heated seats.

We can’t speak for the quality of the Longitude’s 7.0-inch instrument display, but the 10.25-inch widescreen on higher grades we tested carries graphics that are simple but easy to read, with a large digital speedometer, and a handful of layouts to choose from.

The six-speaker sound system delivers average but not exceptional punch, and the quality of the vehicle’s rear camera is also acceptable.

Jeep offers connected services, with a smartphone app enabling remote vehicle tracking, control of its locks and lights, and more.

The Jeep Avenger is yet to receive a safety rating from ANCAP. Jeep Australia says it is working with ANCAP to confirm a score for local-specification vehicles.

However, the Avenger earned three stars from Euro NCAP earlier this year, tested to the latest and most stringent 2023–25 protocols – nearly all of which are aligned with ANCAP’s criteria.

Euro NCAP star ratings are determined by a vehicle’s lowest performance in any of the four test categories.

The Avenger’s 79 per cent result in the adult occupant protection category just fell short of the minimum needed for five stars (80 per cent), while its 70 per cent child occupant protection score is the minimum needed for four stars.

But it earned 59 per cent for vulnerable road user protection and 53 per cent for safety assist technology, both short of the 60 per cent needed in each category to make the vehicle eligible for a four-star result overall.

It lost points due to “marginal” performance of its autonomous emergency braking system when preventing collisions with cars, pedestrians, cyclists and motorcycles, in addition to “weak” performance of its driver monitoring system, in part due to its lack of a more advanced version that includes a camera to watch the driver’s eyes.

Points were deducted in the adult occupant protection category for the risk of occupants’ heads clashing in severe side impacts – as there is no front-centre airbag – as well as marginal protection for the chests of kids in the rear seats, among other areas.

The Jeep Avenger is fitted with most of the safety features expected for new vehicles in its class, but it is not the most feature-packed of its peers.

Rear cross-traffic alert is not available on any model, Jeep says.

While it detected some motorcycles in the Euro NCAP test, Jeep makes no mention of the autonomous emergency braking tech being capable of detecting more than pedestrians and cyclists.

Also absent is a driver-facing attention-monitoring camera, but given most of these systems in other cars tend to be overzealous and too intrusive, it’s not such a bad thing.

There is also no overspeed chime that beeps when the vehicle exceeds the speed limit it has detected – also a good thing, as traffic-sign recognition technology in many new cars regularly misreads signs.

A rear-view camera is standard, with a top-down function that fills in the vehicle’s surroundings as it reverses past them, intended to imitate a 360-degree camera. But it is a static image, and only shows obstacles after you’ve passed them.

The systems fitted to the Avenger generally worked well on test, including well-calibrated adaptive cruise control, and lane-centring assist that smoothly holds the centre of the lane without wandering between the markings or running wide in corners.

The only issue was the lane-keep assist tech’s tendency to confuse tyre marks on one particular unmarked country road for white lane markings, and yank the steering off-course believing the vehicle was veering out of its lane. On marked roads, the tech worked well.

The Jeep Avenger is covered by the same warranty as the rest of the brand’s line-up, which runs to five years – the industry standard – but only 100,000km, not the unlimited-kilometre guarantee offered by most car brands.

A separate eight-year/160,000km warranty is offered for the high-voltage battery, as well as lifetime roadside assistance (renewed every 12 months) as long as the car is serviced through Jeep dealers.

Service intervals are also slightly shorter than the industry average, at 12 months and 12,500km, whichever comes first.

Most other brands offer 12-month/15,000km intervals, while a growing number of electric cars carry 24-month and 30,000km, or even 40,000km schedules, as they have fewer moving parts than petrol and diesel cars, so generally require less maintenance.

Prices amount to $750 over three years/37,500km of scheduled capped-price servicing, or $1250 over five years/62,500km.

It compares to $1628 over five years/100,000km for a BYD Atto 3 Extended, $1560 over six years/90,000km for a Hyundai Kona Electric (as it has two-year/30,000km intervals), and $1546 over five years/125,000km for the Peugeot e-2008, which is between old and updated models, but is closely related to the Avenger.

A year of comprehensive insurance coverage with a leading provider is quoted as $2213 for an Avenger Summit, based on a comparative quote for a 35-year-old male living in Chatswood, NSW. Insurance estimates may vary based on your location, driving history, and personal circumstances.

For context, the same insurer and quote parameters return $2611 for a Hyundai Kona Electric and $1956 for a BYD Atto 3 Extended.

Jeep claims the Avenger’s battery pack can deliver 396km of driving range in European WLTP lab testing in the Longitude and Limited on 17-inch wheels, or 390km in the Summit on 18-inch wheels.

Energy consumption of 15.6kWh per 100 kilometres is claimed for the cheaper two variants, or 15.8kWh/100km in the Summit.

We exclusively tested the Summit on this first drive, covering more than 200km over freeways, winding roads and country towns to return 15.3kWh/100km.

In optimal conditions – at city speeds, in the dry – we saw consumption of close to 14kWh/100km, while driving the car in an enthusiastic manner pushed consumption above 16kWh/100km.

Translation: it is frugal for an electric car, but given how small the car is, you’d hope so. It has similar power consumption to a Tesla Model Y, a much larger vehicle – though Tesla is considered to be the industry leader in electric-car energy efficiency.

DC fast charging at up to 100kW is quoted, for a claimed 20 to 80 per cent fast charge in 24 minutes.

AC charging at up to 7kW is standard in the Longitude, rising to 11kW in the Limited and Summit, for an empty to full recharge in a claimed five hours and 34 minutes.

The Jeep Avenger is oriented toward road use more than any other model in the brand’s line-up, and gladly, it impresses.

A single 115kW/260Nm electric motor driving the front wheels means it is not a rocketship, but there is enough performance for zipping into gaps in traffic, or overtaking at higher speeds with acceptable urgency.

The full 115kW is available all the time in Sport mode, or when the accelerator pedal is pinned in Normal or Eco modes. Otherwise, these settings are limited to 80kW/220Nm and 60kW/180Nm respectively, and the reduced grunt is clear on lighter applications of the right pedal.

Despite a fair amount of torque being sent through only two wheels, wheel spin off the mark is well suppressed thanks to quality Goodyear tyres and smartly tuned traction-control software.

The Avenger is not the most supple city SUV in the class, with taut suspension that transmits more of potholes and imperfections in the road through to occupants than some may like.

It was not too stiff to get on our nerves on this drive, but we will caveat that by saying we did not spend any time on notoriously bumpy roads in Australian capital cities – so we will reserve our final judgement on ride comfort until we get an Avenger through the Drive garage soon.

At higher speeds, it can skip and jostle around over some bumps and undulations – a characteristic of cars with short footprints – but it’s composed enough for rough Australian country roads.

The firmer edge to the suspension translates to agile handling, with little body roll, modest weight for an electric car, and quick steering that increases its speed progressively the more lock is applied.

The steering is too light for our tastes, however. In Eco and Normal, there’s very little resistance in the rack – even at car park speeds – so we found ourselves driving the car in Sport mode to add some surety to the experience, particularly at higher speeds.

Drivers can choose between two levels of regenerative braking strength – D and B, via the centre console-positioned gear selector – which can slow the car by lifting off the accelerator pedal with reasonable urgency.

But there is no one-pedal mode, so drivers will need to touch the brake pedal at low speeds to come to a full stop. The transition between regenerative braking and the ‘friction’ disc brakes is well managed, though.

Visibility is also reasonable out all windows, and the cabin is reasonably well suppressed from the outside, with the exception of some tyre roar on coarse-chip country roads.

This is not a Jeep buyers are likely to take off-road, but in case some do, there are Sand, Mud and Snow modes, plus hill-descent control, underbody protection, 200mm of ground clearance at the car’s lowest point, and decent off-road angles for a city SUV (20 degrees approach, 20 degrees breakover and 32 degrees departure).

The Jeep Avenger is not rated to tow.

It quotes a payload of 495kg, the maximum weight of passengers, cargo and accessories the vehicle is legally allowed to carry before it is deemed overloaded, and therefore no longer allowed to be driven on the road.

It is sufficient for this type of car, enough for five 95kg passengers – if you can fit three adults across the rear seats in any form of comfort – with some luggage in the boot.

The Jeep Avenger is a compelling first effort for the US brand in the electric vehicle space.

It looks good, is roomier inside than you might expect, offers plenty of convenience and connectivity features, is easy on electricity, and is good to drive.

But there is no hiding $50,000 to $60,000 is a big ask for such a small car – with rear-seat space tight for adults, only about 400km of range, and a possible three-star ANCAP safety rating – when a Tesla Model Y and countless alternatives are a similar price.

If value for money is top of mind in your next electric-car purchase, there are other vehicles that will better suit your needs, but if you’re in love with the looks – and find the price reasonable – the Avenger is a compact electric car with a bit of personality.

The Avenger is arriving now, and Jeep has not indicated it expects to face any stock shortages, or will have a limited allocation of cars.

The next step on the purchase journey is to contact your nearest Jeep dealer to confirm stock near you. You can also find Jeeps for sale at Drive Marketplace.

We would recommend test-driving the Avenger before committing – as well as exploring key alternatives, such as the Hyundai Kona Electric, Smart #1, MG 4 and even the Tesla Model 3 or Model Y, as they are all good electric cars that could better fit your requirements.

If you want to stay updated with everything that's happened to this car since our review, you'll find all the latest news here.