The IT Nerd

The technology in the Jeep Cherokee Limited is extensive. Let’s start with the safety technology, here’s the list of things that will keep you safe:

• Ten air bags including driver and passenger knee blockers
• Adaptive Cruise Control with Stop: This uses radar and video sensors to help maintain a consistent distance between you and the vehicle in front of you by adjusting cruising speeds. When activated, it’s even capable of bringing your vehicle to a full stop automatically.
• Forward Collision Warning with Mitigation system: This alerts you when you’re approaching another vehicle or large obstacle too rapidly, allowing you to take action to prevent a collision.
• LaneSense Lane Departure Warning: This system lets you know if you are drifting out of your lane unintentionally. If you should begin to drift out of your lane without signaling, the system provides an audible warning, as well as feedback through the steering wheel.
• Blind-Spot Monitoring with Rear Cross-Path Detection
• Rear back up camera

The next thing is the key. It’s a proximity key that allows you to walk up, open the door, press the start button, and drive away. You can also remote start the Jeep, open the rear hatch, and unlock the doors. Like other Chrysler vehicles I’ve reviewed, there’s a real key on the inside. When you want to lock the car, simply press a button on the door handle when you get out of the car. Net result: You never have to take the proximity key out of your pocket.

Now to the easy part of this review, which is the UConnect system. This is a newer version than the one that was in the Grand Cherokee that I drove last year. It has been refined since the last time I tried it with things like the buttons and graphics looking more smooth and consistent. Navigation is still provided by Garmin which is a good thing. And as usual, it took me seconds to pair my iPhone via Bluetooth and make everything work the way I expected. Plugging in my iPhone via USB allowed me access to all the music and playlists on it. The voice recognition was good, though I had trouble with street names. The system is powered by a 8.4″ touchscreen which is clear and easy to read. There are redundant controls that are well designed and easy to reach. When it comes to the design part, I’ll use the controls on the steering wheel as an example. Individual buttons have their own feel so that once you know what the functions are, you can use them purely based on feel. It’s still a excellent system to use. But it’s facing some significant competition in the form of the system that comes with the Hyundai Genesis which comes with a 9″ screen and is just as easy to use. Thus, Chrysler may have to step up it’s game shortly.

No matter where I was sitting, the audio was fantastic. Crisp highs and well defined bass with zero distortion. Kudos to Chrysler for providing a top notch stereo.

Now to the crown jewel of the technology in the Jeep Cherokee, which is the fact that it will parallel and perpendicular park itself using a feature called ParkSense. Now cars that do parallel parking by themselves is not a new feature as several vehicles have this feature including the Ford Explorer that I reviewed a couple of years ago. But perpendicular parking is a new feature that I have not seen in another vehicle. I tried both and they work well, assuming you understand how the system works. More on that a second. Right now let me show you a video of the system in action:

Now it looks impressive, but I did this in an open parking lot where it took several tries to get this video recorded. The reason being is that I had to be three feet or less from the cars that you’re trying to park between. Once I figured that out, I was able to make the system work perfectly at will. Another thing to note, you have to trust the system. The first time I used it, I was convinced that I was going to hit one of the cars I was trying to park between and I aborted the parking attempt. Further attempts at parking brought about the revelation that the system would automatically figure out when I was too close to a car and issue instructions to shift into drive or reverse depending on the situation so that it could adjust the position of the car. My suggestion is to try out the system in a parking lot for a hour or two until you are comfortable using ParkSense. It does work well once you understand how it works.

In the last part of my review, I’ll wrap up some loose ends and I will give you my final verdict.

This entry was posted on May 29, 2014 at 8:00 am and is filed under Products with tags Jeep. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.