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Owners of Jeep Wrangler 4xe report that their cars turn into "bricks" after installing the Uconnect system update. In some cases, the cars stalled while driving.
The first complaints about the problematic software appeared earlier this week. On the 4xe forum, one owner said he installed the update and the next morning tried to drive around the block. But during the trip, the engine suddenly stalled, the Check Engine light came on, and the message "Shift to park" appeared on the dashboard.
On Reddit, another owner described a different situation. He was driving on the highway at 65 mph (105 km/h) when his Wrangler 4xe suddenly began to slow down with the same messages on the panel. The driver reported that he narrowly avoided a "huge accident": he had to emergency merge across four lanes to pull over to the shoulder.
Jeep quickly responded to the information about the problems. A representative of the Stellantis Social Engagement Team (Stellantis owns Jeep) wrote a warning on the 4xe forum: do not install the update.
"If you have already installed the update, be extremely careful. If you have NOT installed it and see a pop-up window — keep postponing the installation to prevent the update from going through. The telematics module update can be postponed indefinitely; it will expire on its own after 30 days," the company wrote.
Initially, Jeep recommended not driving in hybrid or electric modes, but owners reported problems even in gasoline mode. One of the forum participants called the situation "completely unacceptable" — Jeep released the update, clearly without properly testing it.
Soon after acknowledging the problem, the automaker announced that it had released a new, corrected version of the software. Owners need to park their cars in an area with good mobile coverage and leave them on for at least 10 minutes. After that, they can turn off, start again, and the problem should disappear.
The company also confirmed that it is helping customers whose cars were towed to dealerships and is compensating costs.
The current official recommendation from Jeep is to allow the update to install while the car is at home, then let the engine run for about 20 minutes so the corrective patch loads correctly. The company insists that the fixed version of the software will not cause problems.
Source: Carscoops
