Grand Wagoneer’s Seven Screens Are Trump Card For Jeep’s Biggest Model

Stellantis lay mostly dormant over the last several years as one automaker after another came out with new three-row SUVs to appeal to the family-hauling explosion by millennial car buyers. Then came an elongated Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Then finally, last year, Jeep introduced the Grand Wagoneer, reviving a nameplate after nearly 30 years for its largest and grandest SUV. And arguably, what is key to the entire Grand Wagoneer proposition?: seven screens.

One of the most important differentiators as Jeep markets it very comfortable, hulking new three-row Grand Wagoneer is the fact that the nameplate offers seven digital screens throughout the vehicle – as many as four in the front and rearconsoles, including a big nav screen; separate screens for each second-row passenger; and a screen just for the front-seat passenger.

“We’d done a few concept cars with that many screens, but it was only conceptual,” Josh Rigg, lead design manager at Stellantis and head of Jeep/Chrysler user experience, told me. “Anything goes [in a concept.] But as far as purposeful, meaningful, very targeted execution — this is the most screens so far.”

Not only do the total of as many as three console screens give driver and rear passengers convenient digital control of Grand Wagoneer’s many functions — which range from highly flexible climate controls to massaging front seats — but the screen for each second-row passenger can be controlled individually by that passenger, using FireTV programing by Amazon and accessing other content. Same for the front passenger screen, which optic technology understandably blocks from view by the driver.

Rigg noted that the Grand Wagoneer’s system built upon the company’s continued success with its highly rated Uconnect digital-communication system. “We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel when it was already working,” he said. The Grand Wagoneer’s system is “faster with quicker transitions between apps and as you stroll through content,” he said, as well as more extensive and highly individualized.

“When we were talking about luxury early on, we wanted to understand what that meant” to consumers, Rigg said. “The company collects lots of data on customers, and our system had to be very personalized, really immersive. And the third thing is when you sit in the Wagoneer with the spatial areas, it’s very apparent that it makes you feel that this are is mine, in any position in the car — that it’s very catered to me. Having something unique for every passenger was important.”

In the vehicle’s second row, for instance, he said, “One passenger can watch Netflix and one can plug in a game controller, and it alleviates all the fighting.”

As far as the front passenger is concerned, Rigg said, “We wanted to give them the ability to do all this extra stuff. Already, they can’t use the nav screen or the keyboard” in the center of the cockpit because, of course, such activity could distract the driver, and the driver is restricted in certain activities.

“But,” he noted, “if we gave the passenger the ability to watch media or see a movie, it’s even more important that the driver isn’t distracted. So there is a film on the passenger display that keeps it localized and prevents the driver form seeing it.”

Also crucial to the appeal of the Grand Wagoneer screen set, Rigg said, is that “the rear seat can pause content and pick up right where you left off. That’s an amazing convenience for a parent. You don’t have to be the bad guy and stop streaming, carry tablets or worry about them being stolen from the vehicle, or worry about hot or cold. It’s seamless and convenient because it’s integrated.”

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One key to the entire Grand Wagoneer proposition