California police aren't loving their Tesla cop cars

https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/11/california-police-arent-loving-their-tesla-cop-cars/

by doener • 2 years ago

36 53 2 years ago

kleiba• 2 years ago

Wouldn't they have known the dimensions of the Teslas before they considered using them? I mean, it's not like they have had zero prior experience on what makes good police cars?!

gridspy• 2 years ago

I think there is a disconnect here between the decision makers and the experts in the Police Garage.

lazide• 2 years ago

Classic gov’t/big Corp purchasing.

graemep• 2 years ago

At multiple levels too. Push to switch to EV's regardless of whether suitable vehicles were available, then an extremely bad choice of actual vehicles to buy

DragonStrength2• 2 years ago

and note that in a firefight, police are taught to hide behind a car’s engine block. With EVs, that’s not an option.

Definitely not an issue I'd ever considered with EVs.

irjustin• 2 years ago

It's not that it's not even an option. Puncture that battery and the raging inferno makes the situation 1000x worse.

thebruce87m• 2 years ago

Reminder: there are several different EV battery chemistries that would all react differently under this scenario.

Here is an example of someone drilling into a solar LFP battery: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D8xNjz73p80

Closi3• 2 years ago

It's not really an issue with EV's - if this was a requirement I'm sure they could have modified parts of the car to provide protection.

The issue seems to be that the purchase was poorly thought out and didn't think about all the requirements of a police car.

DragonStrength2• 2 years ago

Yeah, that's the point of me pulling it out: especially relevant to software folks when thinking about product requirements. "It's a car! I know what they need."

kelnos• 2 years ago

Article is pretty light on content, and links to something quite more substantial:

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/california-switch-ele...

fragmede• 2 years ago

that's a much better link.

the F150 Lightning has much more going for it as a police EV.

saagarjha• 2 years ago

I don’t really want cops to have massive trucks.

whoitwas3• 2 years ago

Why? I'm very ignorant of the market. Can these vehicles run for 8 - 12 hours consecutively? The maintenance costs must be absurd. I wonder how often the tires must be swapped with this amount of constant wear and tear?

armitron• 2 years ago

One wonders what the point of this article is besides “we fucked up by choosing something that we should have known did not fit the constraints we had”.

toptrumps• 2 years ago

EV is an election issue right now for swing states. So might be a hot topic.

Closi3• 2 years ago

"Now we have dismissed Tesla, we have now decided to purchase tiny clown cars, as we could squeeze many police and suspects in each car"

2 months later

"We have now found that clown cars actually don't go fast enough, as they are only designed to travel at 2-3 miles per hour in a circus ring. Also they are not as big internally as you might think. We are now investing in a drag racing car that will be retro-fit for police work."

stavros4• 2 years ago

"EV bad" propaganda. It's easy to frame it as "we bought some cars that didn't fit our use case, therefore the cars are bad".

timomaxgalvin• 2 years ago

EVs are still on the early adopter phase. Things will get better, but I won't be buying one for the foreseeable.

metaphor• 2 years ago

EVs are still on the early adopter phase.

Not in California---the subject of the article---it ain't.

whoitwas3• 2 years ago

I think they meant tech is in the early stages where it's too unstable or undeveloped to be good value.

stavros4• 2 years ago

The objections are about Teslas, not EVs in general.

mglz• 2 years ago

say a reliance on unsecured charging stations makes officers vulnerable when it comes to transporting suspects long distances; and note that in a firefight, police are taught to hide behind a car’s engine block

I am a diehard EV proponent, but it's important to admit that there are places where EVs are not the right solution. Especially in vehicles which take part in emergency response, the high energy density of fossil fuels is absolutely a benefit.

stavros4• 2 years ago

It doesn't really look like it? It looks like there was only one case in however many years this officer has worked that they've needed the extra range. If nothing else, they can have one IC car for when long-term trips need to happen.

The rest of the issues sound like Tesla issues, rather than EV issues.

Retric• 2 years ago

Not being able to hide behind the engine block is a cop specific issue. One that could be fixed by adding armor to some part of the vehicle but still an issue.

bravetraveler3• 2 years ago

They're permitted exactly one combustible engine for purpose? What? The job demands the tool, not you.

giardini3• 2 years ago

"... in a firefight, police are taught to hide behind a car’s engine block"<

So the cop should possibly orient himself so that his/her head, heart and lungs [and maybe even his/her nuts, if (s)he has 'em] are protected by the engine block ? Good luck with that!

Most cops are larger than most engine blocks. Hiding behind an auto engine block is almost certainly a "Hail Mary" move in a firefight. If you do the math (and compute protection vs officer orientation relative to the shooter(s) and to the engine block) better strategies are to:

- hide - seek concealment, leave if possible,

- run - move away from shooter(s),

- if you are legally required to stay and have a weapon and if you can shoot it well, provide covering fire (to keep the shooter down).

Whilst moving away won't provide protection from a stray bullet, our 3-d world's geometry reduces very rapidly the odds of being hit as you move away from a shooter. The instinctual urges to flee and/or "hit the deck" (lie flat, play dead, etc. until you can see where to flee) are useful.

This is boosted by the fact that most people, cops and otherwise, cannot shoot a firearm (esp. a handgun) accurately. If you have the bad luck to be in a shootout with a marksman who can keep his cool under fire, then you're likely SOL. But the above advice (hide and run) remains valid.

Summary: the presence of an engine block for protection is not a convincing argument against the use of EVs for law enforcement.

I like this:

https://www.wikihow.com/Avoid-Being-Shot

and this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/hu4srd/whats_the...

wakawaka286• 2 years ago

These are police officers. They aren't supposed to run away from gun fights as a first option. They need to at least try to engage and shut down the threat.

hide - seek concealment, leave if possible

That is exactly what the engine block thing is for. It is a last resort but the alternative is to likely get shot through the vehicle or get shot in the back running away from your actual job.

Not to mention, an EV can get shot in the battery leading to a huge fire, possibly incinerating anyone locked in the back seat of the car. EV fires are often sudden and often accompanied by explosions, whereas petrol-fueled cars are very difficult to ignite in a gunfight (contrary to the ridiculous explosions that Hollywood shows).

Summary: You don't have a clue what you are talking about. The cops, many of whom are combat veterans on top of their police training, DO understand the threats.

bstsb2• 2 years ago

this seems like they haven't done their research at all - i find it surprising that they even thought a Model 3 would be a good police vehicle considering its dimensions.

perhaps a better alternative is picking one of the many other EVs that are based on a ICE framework, which i presume would be much easier to modify as required?

Angostura• 2 years ago

The article says they are using Model Ys

bstsb2• 2 years ago

oops, could have sworn it said Model 3s - might have been the other article linked

ChrisMarshallNY• 2 years ago

I saw a video, that discussed Ford Fusions, as cop cars.

It made a lot of sense.

Not 100% electric, but they get serious mileage. I used to drive one, and it got about 45 MPG, with pretty good performance.

Closi3• 2 years ago

Totally agree - this story is only really interesting because it is Tesla, and it seems like they could have worked out that they wouldn't be suitable ahead of time. But equally this looks like a trial and maybe they just had to do the trial to dismiss it as a silly option.

It would be the same if some police force decided to purchase BMW Mini's, spent $100k retrofitting each for police work, and then complained that they were too small after the fact.

Total own goal!

starfezzy2• 2 years ago

All of the complaints were applicable to other EVs, or else a problem of poor planning rather than a problem of Teslas specifically. For example, choosing the small model then complaining that it’s small, or failing to install chargers in their lot then complaining they don’t have chargers in their lot.

They mentioned that other brands weren’t even an option to due to various reasons, so it’s weird that they framed it as a hit piece on Tesla rather than a failure of the EV market.

The piece ends with the F-150 Lightning portrayed as the savior (in a department that had the foresight to install chargers in their lot), but they don’t draw attention to the fact it has most of the same issues cited as complaints in the Tesla section (need to use chargers on long-distance road trips, can’t hide behind an engine block).

The linked article also doesn’t mention any of the positives cited in the article that it’s referencing.

But, you know, any opportunity to shit on something related to Elon Musk…

stavros4• 2 years ago

All of the complaints were applicable to other EVs

Out of the ten or so complaints I read, only two were applicable to other EVs (can't do long range, which it sounds like they only needed once), and no engine block to hide behind (surely they can just install additional armor on that part of the car).

The rest is Tesla being unfit for being a police car, which, yes, it is, why are you buying something you know doesn't fit your use case?

neevans• 2 years ago

US election bullshit article

whoitwas3• 2 years ago

This stinks of regulatory capture. If dark maga Elon and his goons pull off this election, they're really gonna take this sucker for everything, aren't they?

sshine2• 2 years ago

In Copenhagen, taxis have taxi-only EV chargers provided by the taxi companies.

The police have not yet ventured towards EVs, but as part of doing that, they must build the charger infrastructure to guarantee reliable charging of their fleet.

Allocating grid for fast charging in a densely populated area isn’t easy. Battery-powered chargers aren’t that common, and building noiseless ones is difficult.

The commercial infrastructure for fast charging is just not good enough yet. Emergency fast chargers need better geographical distribution.

wakawaka286• 2 years ago

Battery-powered chargers aren’t that common, and building noiseless ones is difficult.

Noiseless ones means ones that don't use huge diesel generators to meet demand, I assume. You may as well put that fuel into a conventional vehicle if you have to do all that. It's surely more efficient than building like 3x as much stuff just to ultimately burn the same energy.

The commercial infrastructure for fast charging is just not good enough yet. Emergency fast chargers need better geographical distribution.

I think it will never make sense. If fast service is required it will have to come down to battery exchanges, or else exchanging whole cars.

sshine2• 2 years ago

Noiseless ones means ones that don't use huge diesel generators to meet demand, I assume.

No, the noisy part is actively cooling a ton of batteries confined to a crammed metal box without disturbing neighbors and keeping within the legal noise limits, which is often a very low boundary in highly populated areas for obvious but inconvenient reasons.

Rapidly discharging a ton of batteries produces a lot of heat.

Frequently overheating batteries will make them degrade more quickly.

This quickly ruins the value proposition when TCO depends on so many things (physical design of EV charger and its ventilation, algorithmic design of battery management system, and electrochemical design of cells).

If fast service is required it will have to come down to battery exchanges, or else exchanging whole cars

Have you looked outside?

That's not how the world currently works.

All companies that try to hotswap batteries inside cars are miserable.

Real fast-chargers and very fast-charging (800V) cars actually exist.

But yeah, besides a lacking charger infrastructure, adding range anxiety to patrolling officers must be the major dealbreaker.

BLKNSLVR• 2 years ago

Wow, this is a shallow article. The timing of it feels like attempting to offset yesterday's event.

None of the reasons they list are applicable to real world users.

How far are they transporting suspects for range to be a problem? Sounds like a use-case mismatch to me.

I don't think I'm a Tesla fanboy / apologist. Elon is a nut job for supporting Trump and various other conspiracy-theory level outbursts.

SebFender• 2 years ago

Makes me think about new towing trucks our cities have been getting up here in canada - they are all proud of buying electric models... Let me tell you : when it's -20 degrees in winter - the last thing you want having troubles are towing trucks. I get the strategy - but as always what about the operational challenges?

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41810627

California police aren't loving their Tesla cop cars

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