Hey
Kaido, time for a roadtrip!
https://youtu.be/gthrdNtQuJQ
Hah nice! I'm surprised at how well it does off-road, it's definitely not a wanna-be Jeep. I haven't taken it on anything serious (no public trails in CT, have to drive up to Mass for anything fun), but there are some backroads here that are bumpy enough.
Only real issue I've had with it so far is squeaky brakes. As mentioned earlier, there's a TSB out for it, so I need to run it in this month. Range is still junk, best has been 268 miles, worst has been 234. Coming from a Civic where I got an average of 400 miles per tank, it feels pretty pathetic haha. Fuel economy is averaging out to 22.8 MPG. I'm doing about half city, half highway right now & it's rated for 21/29, so it's definitely on the low side:
http://www.fuelly.com/car/jeep/renegade/2015/kaidomac/399729
I've swapped out with my wife's Forester a few times & I would say that the Forester is definitely a better car, almost the next class up of car: way better visibility, better handling, far better acceleration, etc. But you feel like you get your man card back in the Jeep, so at least there's that I think if they dumped the 9-speed transmission for a quality CVT like Subaru has, it would be a night & day difference. I call the acceleration lag in the Renegade "turbo lag" haha. That's probably the most annoying thing about the car. If you're at a stop & punch it, it's fine because it doesn't have to drop from gear 8 or 9 to 4 to get power, but if you're on the highway, there's a significant & noticeable delay when you need to gun it. I've adapted, but again, after driving my wife's Forester, it's amazing how much better Subaru's CVT is as a transmission, almost enough that I wish I had just gotten a base model Forester instead. But I love my Jeep & enjoy all of the bells & whistles, especially for the price
Uconnect is pretty meh. The voice dial thing needs an "end talking" keyword. It listens for like 15 seconds before it translates your voice to text to search, so you have to be really quiet for awhile after saying "Call Bob", and if it picks up any acceleration noise or talking in the background, it spazzes out. On the flip side, the voice stuff is more accurate than Siri, so that's nice. I've experienced some glitches with the Uconnect system as well, and it can be a little slow to boot up & stuff. Backup camera looks terrible at night, like a VHS transfer to DIVX haha. Needs some IR LED's back there!
I did sign up for the free year trial of Uconnect's service. Works like crap, but that's because Sprint is absolutely terrible in Connecticut. I rarely get above one bar on the display. I think I've only been able to make the iPhone remote start work twice out of a dozen times because it just can't pick up the signal. Viper's SmartStart is definitely a better way to go in my area because it uses Verizon's 3G network, which has really good coverage where I live. When I was activating it, it kept dropping the call from the car's built-in phone system, so I had to drive to a different area where I got two bars in order to get a usable signal (and it was still faint!). So they really cheaped out by going with the worst network available; I'd even take AT&T over Sprint lol. I definitely won't be renewing it at the end of the trial!
The heated steering wheel is by far my favorite feature. Sooooooo nice. I'd like to put some neoprene waterproof seat covers on, but I'm not sure how much that would diminish the heated seat feature, which doesn't get crazy hot. Oh yeah, the top middle vents are pretty anemic, even at max airflow. It got pretty cold on my drive home last night & only the vent by the door was really pumping anything usable out. Makes me miss my Volvo's 6-cylinder engine a bit, that thing heated up QUICK & really blew out the hot air! Even if I do the 15-minute preheat via remote start, the 4-cylinder takes awhile to warm up to the point where it's really cranking out heat, so it's usually still cold when I go outside for my morning commute. But that's to be expected on smaller engines like this.
The one feature I wish it had was radar cruise, which my Forester has (EyeSight), since I do a lot of highway driving. Radar creep mode in stop & go traffic would be awesome too, I would have paid more for both of those features for sure. But it's going to be a few more years until that stuff comes to the sub-$30k car market. Hmm, what else. I do like sitting up in the seat, rather than leaning back like in my Civic. I also really like the height from the ground...I don't have to angle the car in to go up steep driveways or bumpy parking lot entrances at all, which is really nice. Overall I really like the car, it's been treating me well so far! Other than the squeaky brakes (for which a fix is available for), my only complaint is the acceleration lag, but I've mostly gotten used to that. The rest is gravy! :thumbsup: