In reply to _ :
It would be interesting to see what the effective pay back window on Tesla 3s would be. Or if it even would make up the difference?
A long range Telsa 3 is what $50k?
In reply to _ :
It would be interesting to see what the effective pay back window on Tesla 3s would be. Or if it even would make up the difference?
A long range Telsa 3 is what $50k?
Ian F said:I've read a few articles about EMP risks and the general comment is it's basically a great science fiction plot tool that has little basis in reality and how much it would actually affect modern electronics.
This. EMPs are not easy to make. No military is using EMP weapons we know of (apart from the possibility of setting off a nuke high in the atmosphere).
A more practical version is a HERF gun. But, any such device would take out not only EVs but any car with EFI, possibly even everything short of an MFI diesel or carbed gas engine with a points distributor.
So it's not a new threat. You could also release volcanic dust in front of an ICE (without a very specialized intake air filtration system) to disable it, but nobody's tried that yet.
Hacking won't be a unique threat to EVs either, the ICE vehicles are just as loaded with remote-accessible computers and just as easy to mess with.
dculberson said:Sorry, I didn't mean to shout you down! I just didn't think it was a situation that was likely.
How about this: instead of disabling the police cars, confuse the safety nannies into thinking there are pedestrians in the area, so they'll slam on the brakes. Any other fun ways you can think of fooling them into acting in undesirable ways??
I wonder if a blow up doll in the middle of the road would make the car stop. Obviously not if it's an Uber, they'll just mow it down.
Now you're talking! A piece of plywood with a blow-up doll attached to it, inflated with a CO2 cartridge that is activated by a switch when dropped from the bottom of the escape vehicle.
Ian F said:Now you're talking! A piece of plywood with a blow-up doll attached to it, inflated with a CO2 cartridge that is activated by a switch when dropped from the bottom of the escape vehicle.
A wheeled version of this was an item in the MDK series of videogames, when you deployed it all the bad guys would ignore you and attack it instead, because it was also sort of a comedy game 
Keith Tanner said:Of course running out of "fuel" would be an issue. But the usage patterns of these fleets are extremely well understood, they don't decide to take an inter-city trip on the weekend because it's fun and spontaneous. I'll bet any police force in the country could tell you the average distance traveled by one of their vehicles per day along with standard deviations, the maintenance and consumable cost and the lifetime cost.
Some departments (not sure if all of them), hand off cars from officer to officer, so finding the downtime to charge them might require adding more cars to the fleet. If we're specifically talking about Tesla, then I also doubt they're going to want to spend $100K+ each to buy a Model S, and a Model 3 might not be large enough to handle the requirements (prisoner transport, shotguns, equipment mounts, etc).
Edit: also, police departments want vehicles that can be casually driven over curbs at moderately high speeds without tearing the suspension off.
I'd be more concerned that in this interconnected day and age, the thief would just hack into the police cars and disable them with some malicious code or something (whether EV or ICE). Which costs almost nothing to do, so would mesh better with someone robbing a bank.
Though if you have the skill to do that, I suppose you have the skill to just steal money online.
z31maniac said:In reply to _ :
It would be interesting to see what the effective pay back window on Tesla 3s would be. Or if it even would make up the difference?
A long range Telsa 3 is what $50k?
Our local Harley dealer got all het up when our local police force switched to BMWs, because the BMW was more expensive. Tried to get everyone all wound up about inappropriate expenditures. Turns out the total cost of ownership was less for the BMW, and the police force stood their ground.
The Harley dealer now sells BMWs as well.
A lot of companies do special police versions of their vehicles. It would be interesting to see a cop version of a Tesla.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I'm actually very surprised we haven't seen a cop version from Dubai yet. Yes, I understand the roll oil plays in their economy, but they've got hover bikes and helicopter uber, viper and lambo cop cars, a Tesla seems like it would fit right in.
Turns out there are several Teslas out there doing police duty. Fremont, CA has one that got in the news because it ran out of juice in the middle of a high speed chase. That's not going to work well with gas either, but the headlines are a lot funnier if it's an EV. Denver, CO has one. So does the LAPD, Badgersville IN and Brookhaven...dunno.
Mexico City has ordered 15 Cybertrucks for police duty and apparently, yes, Dubai is also interested.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I wouldn't be surprised if fuel and maintenance savings on a Tesla ended up making them less expensive to own than an Explorer or Charger as well.
Most of the challenges listed are fairly easy to overcome at least in large departments. Currently many cars are not equipped with to carry prisoners. If needed the officers call for a cage car. It saves money both from the cost of the cage and letting them use smaller cars. Hitting curbs is also frowned upon. The biggest problem is going to be charging as the cars are usually parked on the street but that's probably not to hard to overcome. We're installing chargers in some of our bus stops to top off our new electric buses during the day and it's gone fairly well.
I wonder how much battery Marge Gunderson would burn through just keeping her car warm on a Fargo's winter night?
In reply to Wally :
This gives me an additional idea. Police forces could have a literal cage car that is self driving and not officer operated. Stuff the prisoner inside, lock them down, and tell that thing to go drive back to the jail. No windows. No driver. Just white walls and a camera.
not so sure on police.. but what about Mail delivery? Batteries seem perfect for that application
mad_machine said:not so sure on police.. but what about Mail delivery? Batteries seem perfect for that application
The Post Office would like you to know they've been testing electric mail vehicles since 1899. They've actually got quite a history of playing with EVs. Makes a lot of sense, the usage would be completely predictable day to day and they'd be able to charge at night.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Cop cars are always idling to keep all the com gear operating. VPD has a system to shut the ICE off and re-start when the battery is depleted.
In reply to Wally :
Maybe if body parts are available. Do you have an idea of how many busted up cop cars there are?
_ said:In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :
Plumb into the tail gate, when the fuzz try to give you the pit, activate it. BUZZ! Short circuit something and that Tesla cop goes down.
so maybe emp isn't the answer. instead, some kind of electrical harpoon gun with discharge.
Naw, EMP mine. Primary cells like Oxygen-aluminum for power (used on the moon rover, hundreds of amps, leave nothing toxic, easily made) coupled to you're noisemaker. Just need a way to get them to clench on! Grip, rip n' toss!
Blowup sex dolls to confuse motion senors is a good idea, like a decoy- might have to keep them "upright" tho. I know antifreeze is used to make smokescreens just like vape clouds, and caltops were mentioned. What other Bond implements do we need?
In reply to mad_machine :
definitely seems like a good solution for short stop and go routes
There are several issues I can think of off the top of my head.
1st off police agencies are cheap. My department has 1600 officers, if you figure they replace their fleet every 5 years that's 320 cars each year not including all the vehicles they crash. You can buy at least one and a half explorers for each Tesla.
2nd point goes in line with cheap cars. The maintenance staff are not trained for electric cars nor are they highly paid, supremely trained mechanics. They can barely keep our fleet of Taurus' and explorers running.
3rd the cars run constantly to run computer equipment, A/C, lights etc. We run 5 day on, 5 day off shifts for patrol. The officers work 12 hours at a time and take the cars home at the end of the shift. That's alot of super charger stations that the department would need to have installed. I assume the agency would pay the officers electric bills...
4th no electric cars are certified for pursuit. That won't fly in a big agency that must meet certain accreditation standards.
As far as the criminals setting off an EMP, I will say I have never encountered a criminal mastermind in 11 years as a cop. If they are out there I suppose they are smart enough that they haven't been caught yet
Many criminals that I have run into are very street smart but that doesn't necessarily translate into what I would classify as highly intelligent.
Most are not the sharpest tools in the shed as you would expect. There is a reason many are not gainfully employed.
In reply to pimpm3 :
Running the cars constantly to do comms/etc is a plus for an EV, not a minus. The draw from that stuff is miniscule on a big EV battery.
The same thing is true for the maintenance. There's much, much less of it. What there is is either dead simple or a part swap.
Either way, the cost has to come down before it makes sense to get em!
1st: what is the lifetime cost of an EV versus an ICE that is more complex mechanically and requires more maintenance? See above anecdote about BMW motorcycles.
2nd: see 1. Less maintenance. Less complex mechanically.
3rd: no need for a Supercharger if you have all night to charge. That’s Level 2 territory, and a lot of EVs come with one. All you need is a battery that will put up with the 12 hour shift. Or put up with a half a shift that has a 30 minute lunch break in the middle at a restaurant with a supercharger.
4th: ...yet.
I doubt EVs will take over every possible vehicle in the fleet. If you’re running speed traps and chasing bank robbers all over north Texas, well, that’s a ways out. If you’re more urban or you’re a detective or code enforcement or something else I can’t come up with because I have 0 years on the force, then maybe the use case fits.
In reply to Dave M :
Not so much the equipment drawing down the batteries but the rechargeablity in say a 10 hour window between shifts. Depending on the beat an officer could cover 150 miles a night, not to mention idle time. My impala averaged around 12 mpg during a shift because of the short trips and constant idling.
The maintenance requirements of police cars are pretty intensive. They eat brakes, batteries, suspension components, tires etc... officers tend to be pretty rough on them. I don't know how agencies with shared cars keep them running.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
They would be great for detectives! I have less than 20k miles on my issued Sonata in two years.
Unfortunately the agency doesn't always go with the most cost effective options. Fighting a entrenched bureaucracy makes change hard sometimes.
They constantly go with the lowest bidder even if it will cost them more in the long run.
pimpm3 said:There are several issues I can think of off the top of my head.
1st off police agencies are cheap. My department has 1600 officers, if you figure they replace their fleet every 5 years that's 320 cars each year not including all the vehicles they crash. You can buy at least one and a half explorers for each Tesla.
2nd point goes in line with cheap cars. The maintenance staff are not trained for electric cars nor are they highly paid, supremely trained mechanics. They can barely keep our fleet of Taurus' and explorers running.
3rd the cars run constantly to run computer equipment, A/C, lights etc. We run 5 day on, 5 day off shifts for patrol. The officers work 12 hours at a time and take the cars home at the end of the shift. That's alot of super charger stations that the department would need to have installed. I assume the agency would pay the officers electric bills...
4th no electric cars are certified for pursuit. That won't fly in a big agency that must meet certain accreditation standards.
As far as the criminals setting off an EMP, I will say I have never encountered a criminal mastermind in 11 years as a cop. If they are out there I suppose they are smart enough that they haven't been caught yet
Many criminals that I have run into are very street smart but that doesn't necessarily translate into what I would classify as highly intelligent.
Most are not the sharpest tools in the shed as you would expect. There is a reason many are not gainfully employed.
In addition to all that how would they hold up to getting rear ended while parked on the side of the road by a vehicle at speed? For example look at the rear end crash impact issues some of the Ford Police Interceptors had. Lots of work to make them withstand the forces of a rear end impact.
Have they solved the self combusting issues that some older Teslas had?
All of the stop em dead scenarios make me laugh. Here in Easton the local hooligans discovered about 20 years ago that if you back up your perp-mobile sharply into the parked cop cruiser it blows the airbags and shuts off the fuel pump. They had to disable the airbags on the whole fleet after the 3rd time it happened.
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