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The all-new Jeep Compass has modern SUV styling and is available with an all-electric powertrain, along with a number of features engineered for off-roading, but it’s front-wheel drive only (for now).
Jeep is known for its history of rugged off-roaders but since Jeep became part of Stellantis in 2021 there have been a number of front-wheel drive Jeeps that have been focused around on-road rather than off-road use. The new Compass model is now available with an all-electric powertrain for the first time, but with front-wheel drive and road tyres, is it worthy of the Jeep badge?
The 2026 Jeep Compass Electric shares its Stellantis platform with the Peugeot E-3008 and E-5008, Citroën C5 Aircross and Vauxhall Grandland Electric. It also has the same 74 kWh battery and front-wheel drive, but to give it some differentiation from the other Stellantis vehicles on the same platform, it has a modern, boxy SUV design in the Jeep brand style.
The Compass is a compact SUV – a segment which accounts for almost a quarter of the total European market – with a length of 4,548mm and a large 550-litre boot. There’s a big compartment under the false floor which can easily accommodate the charging cable, but there’s no front trunk.
The cabin offers decent amounts of storage space, although there’s no floating centre console with space underneath, which is increasingly common in this sector. Rubber mats and a rubber boot liner suggest that the Compass is aimed at people who are likely to get it muddy.
The 2026 Jeep Compass Electric is good to drive, like the Vauxhall Grandland Electric and other platform-sharing family members. It feels like an SUV, with a high driving position, and it combines decent body control with good ride quality on most roads. However secondary ride quality on poor road surfaces isn’t as comfortable, not helped by the 20-inch alloy wheels with relatively low profile tyres, and both the ride quality and the road tyres aren’t ideal for off-roading on rough trails.
Also not ideal for off-roading is the fact that the Compass is front-wheel drive rather than all-wheel drive. As with all cars that have off-road pretensions, we tested the Compass on the rough stuff. This was during one of this summer’s many heatwaves, so there was no mud or snow to contend with, just hills and gravel. Although the Compass survived the off-road route, extremely careful driving was required to ensure no damage was caused to the Michelin e-Primacy road tyres by sharp rocks.
The Compass has some features engineered for off-roading, including a ground clearance of 200mm, a wading depth of 470 mm, and a Selec-Terrain switch which gives the options of Sport, Auto, Snow or Sand/Mud. The Sand/Mud setting really dials down the acceleration, and driving the Compass on-road shows you why – because of the front-wheel drive layout, there’s lots of torque steer. And that’s even with average levels of performance – the 0-62 mph time of 8.3 seconds certainly isn’t in hot-SUV territory.
Unlike the vast majority of Stellantis EVs with a similar gear selector ‘switch’, the Compass has a rotary gear selector with a button in the middle for Park, and this worked very well. There are also steering wheel-mounted paddles for changing the level of brake regen, although even the highest setting of regen didn’t feel very strong.
The Compass has a 10-inch instrument cluster and a very wide but shallow 16-inch central touchscreen, with temperature controls on the left and right of the screen (which are still visible when using Apple Carplay), and some shortcut buttons under the touchscreen. On the left there are some general shortcut buttons, including for ‘Vehicle’, which allows you to switch off the lane departure warning, and climate shortcuts are on the right. These controls are on a strip of plastic rather than conventional individual buttons, but thankfully you do get a click to give you feedback that you’ve pressed the button. There’s even a traditional volume dial.
The Jeep Compass Electric First Edition has a WLTP combined electric driving range of 289 miles. After a week on test, the real-world range averaged 260 miles. It has a WLTP consumption figure of 3.34 miles/kWh.
The Compass has a maximum rapid charging rate of 160 kW, which is an improvement on the standard 100 kW of most Stellantis EVs for many years, and it should deliver a 20% to 80% charge in 30 minutes.
The Compass also has an 11 kW on-board charger and a heat pump.
The Jeep Compass Electric First Edition is priced at £39,200. Our test car had options including Convenience Pack First Edition, Premium Pack First Edition and Dual-Pane Sunroof. All options totalled £6,100, taking the total price to £45,300. Hawaii (the ‘lime green’ of our test car) with a black roof is the standard colour for First Edition models; the other five colour options are Pacific (blue), Antarctica (white), Amazonia (green with brown hues), Yosemite (grey) and Vulcano (black).
The Compass has a 360-degree protective material that shields the lower vehicle from scratches.
An additional two electric variants are due: a two-wheel drive 230hp model with an expected range of up to 402 miles, and a four-wheel drive variant with an expected range of up to 372 miles.
The new Jeep Compass Electric is a much better car than the previous Compass model. It has modern SUV styling, the cabin is functional, and it has a large boot. It’s good to drive overall, but the First Edition model is front-wheel drive only. This results in torque steer on-road, and limited ability off-road, which is constrained even more by the standard road tyres. This is a vehicle with a Jeep badge and some off-road engineering, so it’s a shame that the front-wheel drive layout and the road tyres limit how far you can go off-road (even though we successfully managed to adventure far off the beaten track in very dry mid-summer conditions). So the new Jeep Compass Electric is a good car overall, with a sub-£40,000 price; it’s awarded a Green Car Guide rating of 8 out of 10, but we would wait for the all-wheel drive version.
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Paul Clarke, GreenCarGuide Editor
