With the push of trams, police departments around the country will have to figure out what to do with their fleet of dinosaur vehicles. The mainstay of many of these divisions remains Crown Victorias, although a move to Explorers and Chargers in recent years has updated several fleets. Some cities, though, want to go green but are facing resistance from their police departments. Is a Washington state local store Spokesperson’s Review Reportedly, Spokane Police do not want Teslas nor any other electric vehicles the city intends to buy.
The city and the police department are at odds over the future direction of the department’s fleet. The city of Spokane plans to buy 64 vehicles this year. Spokane City Councilmember Breean Beggs wants those vehicles to be electric. The move comes as Washington state moves to transition to all electric vehicles by 2030. Beggs wants electric vehicles “as required by both state and city law wherever feasible.” But the ministry said no way.
Why? Teslas don’t make good patrol cars. The police department already has two Teslas in its fleet. According to the assessment:
They are not a proper police car. They are too small. They are not designed for police work,” Major General Michael McNab told Spokane City Council’s Public Health and Public Safety Committee earlier this month.
Department leaders recently let city leaders know what they mean, pointing to the tight limitations of Tesla’s interior with an internal survey of employees supporting the fact that officials don’t like it. Small interior space. But Beggs counts by saying that if the department doesn’t want Teslas, it can choose another EV.
This is not to say that the department doesn’t want anything to work. It currently enjoys using Explorer Hybrids as its patrol vehicle. But there is also a money problem. On almost every level, everything else but Tesla makes more sense. From the article:
It costs about $30,000 to fully outfit a Tesla as a patrol vehicle, excluding the cost of purchasing the vehicle, compared with about $8,000 to $15,000 for a K8 Hybrid, according to the ministry.
But even with those additional operating costs, the estimated five-year cost of ownership for the city is $101,000 for the Tesla and $99,000 for the K8 Hybrid, a negligible difference.
Beggs counters that by saying electric vehicles can last longer, so the cost savings should be seen over time. But Beggs is frustrated with the department’s aversion to electric vehicles.
“The challenge is that they keep looking for reasons to say no instead of how to get it done,” he said. But McNabb doesn’t think an EV is the right vehicle right now. “For the purchase of these 64 vehicles, there is no suitable EV solution and if we were to purchase any of these alternatives, we would only be testing with EVs. on a larger scale than two Teslas.”
