Call shotgun and play a game of Forza, but first you have to figure out how to power it up.
The 2022 Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland I recently drove was pretty decked out: head-up display, heated and cooled massage seats, night vision. But I was most intrigued by the passenger-side display screen up front, which looked designed to do more than just ape the data on the center console display—there’s an HDMI input just ahead of the shifter. On the back of the center console? A 115-volt AC outlet. Which got me thinking: Could someone in the front seat play Xbox in here?
Before you blast me, and Jeep, and the good people at Microsoft for taking driver distraction to new and preposterous heights, I should point out that the Grand Cherokee’s screen is invisible to the driver. Thanks to a polarized coating on the screen, the display disappears for the driver and is utterly opaque. Only when you’re sitting in front of it, perpendicular to the screen (or nearly so), does the display reveal itself. So you can’t watch Netflix while behind the wheel. Nor play NBA 2K, if you could get it to work.
Thanks to that HDMI port, getting the Xbox’s signal to the screen is the easy part. Powering up the console is another matter. Microsoft claims that an Xbox One S like this one only draws 62 watts when playing games, but it must draw quite a bit more than that at startup. Every time I plugged it into the Jeep, it would power up for about 10 seconds before blowing the circuit. The outlet is rated for a modest 150 watts, so the Xbox startup routine must involve a peak draw somewhat higher than that.
Now, there are inverters that plug into a 12-volt power outlet and provide much more than 150 watts. In fact, that’s how I got the Xbox going on the rear-seat entertainment screens in a 2021 Chevy Tahoe last year. Unfortunately, I lost my inverter sometime after that and haven’t gotten around to buying a new one. But I had another idea for a workaround. If 150 watts proves insufficient, you may as well play it safe and plug into something that provides well more than that. Say, 2200 watts? That should do it.
And that’s how I ended up with my Honda EU2200i inverter generator strapped to a hitch-mount cargo rack, an extension cord running in through a rear window and powering one item: the Xbox. Within a couple minutes, my kid was playing NBA 2K as we drove around the neighborhood. Somewhere, Xzibit smiled.
But was he playing offline, you ask? Yes, he was. Although the Grand Cherokee offers an AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot, it wasn’t set up and I didn’t try using the one on my phone. I’m an electricity-generation genius, not an IT expert. Plus, the kids these days are spoiled enough as it is, what with their passenger-seat Xbox and their cargo rack generator systems and their seemingly absolute imperviousness to motion sickness.
So there you have it: You can play Xbox in the front seat of the 2022 Grand Cherokee. Whether you should is not for me to answer.
Keyword: You Can Play Xbox on the 2022 Jeep Grand Cherokee's Passenger Screen