>> I do wonder if the choice to use the Model 3 sedan was the right one

I don't think you need to wonder. I have one and I love it, but if I were a cop, it wouldn't be my choice. I don't even think the Model Y would cut it. They should be using the Model X.

OTOH, I see cops driving a lot of Dodge Chargers around here (New England). Having rented one at one point, I can tell you that they don't have a whole lot of back seat room either, so I'm not sure about that point that one of the chiefs made.

But, yeah, I think it should be obvious to the most casual of observers that when you're trying to outfit a newish car that wasn't built for it to achieve a special purpose there's going to be growing pains. I couldn't find any solid quotes for police cars, but I seem to remember seeing that the average one was pushing $100,000 so the numbers they mentioned for the Teslas didn't sound that outrageous.

Well they make their own requirements so it's like me telling my job I need dual GPUs, 64GB RAM and 10TB to send my emails and make charts in Excel. Yeah, we do need a server/workhorse but not everyone needs one. Chromebook will due for most.

I was just listening to the head of a municipal bus line on NPR talking about how there’s 70% non-payment of fares. Less than a third of his riders are doing what they’re supposed to. The interviewer then asked whether it was true that there was a policy not to even have a bus driver mention that the fare hadn’t been paid, let alone confront the person or kick them off, the guy responded, saying that that was indeed the policy, because the safety of his staff was paramount. This was just after he finished complaining about how people should follow social rules, but he’s apparently unwilling to enforce them. I personally think that public transportation should be fully subsidized as a public good, but if you’re going to have a rule, you need to enforce it if you want people to maintain general respect for the law.

So maybe just letting people run away from the police because it might be dangerous to chase them doesn’t seem like the right solution. At least find another way to implement the consequence. The alternatives that spring to mind require extensive surveillance, though, so I’m not sure there is a preferable alternative.

That’s like saying let’s not equip planes that won’t crash with black boxes. Only the ones that crash need it. Let’s split up crashing and non crashing planes.

I thought a majority of arrests are made during traffic stops, if you run and they can't chase, how do you expect arrests to happen?

I'm not a fan of the current system, but I struggle to personally come up with a better one.

Modern gas pumps don't work without electricity, but batteries and generators can still charge electric cars.

As far as I know South Pasadena is the only one that has converted their entire fleet to Teslas. It’s a small city in the middle of suburban LA with zero off roading and they borrow lots of resources from the Pasadena PD so the limitations probably aren’t that big a deal. There’s not a lot going on in the town so if someone is getting arrested half the officers on duty show up anyway.

Other departments are running smaller trials or converting to more suitable cars like the F-150 Lightning mentioned in the article.

> are testing these things out in the public?!

Long gone are the days that they could afford to arrange proper pre-live-environment testing for anything like this. Even if much testing is done away from the live environment some testing period is still going to be needed before full roll-out (though this seems to be earlier stage testing than that).

I can't currently imagine (say) an electric fire truck, nor ambulance.

Why? The biggest problem I can think of is that they have a shorter range, but for a fire truck or ambulance the extra weight for longer range wouldn't really be an issue. The lower maintenance requirements might also mean ambulances won't be the shitshow that private ambulance companies make them right now.

In the worst case scenario, I imagine there would be more priority for a vehicle which can provide power to on-scene electric vehicles, which is something frequently done for lighting up scenes even today.

That said, I don't see these coming today or tomorrow. In a couple of years, though, we'll start seeing them more.

Irvine did, looks like it's working for them: https://ngtnews.com/tesla-cybertruck-ready-to-help-enforce-t...

The F150 Lightning actually worked for the purpose, if you read the article.

This does not sound unreasonable at all. The crown Vic and explorer have had kits for decades and ford designers know the requirements

This department bought retail consumer teslas and had to get custom fittings to bring them up to spec

Of course it’s going to be expensive. Getting out of ICE vehicles is going to have a sticker shock and it’s our own fault for waiting this long to get started

The $150k budget included the price of 2 cars. They probably didn't get base models. $35k was for modifying both.

They have to bootstrap the r&d for armoring Teslas. They could only find a performance shop that mostly does fiber aero kits. That's the actual issue - no existing armorers. For the "engine block hide", though, would keeping some extra vests in the frunk do the job?

Perhaps they're better off with an EV Blazer?

Weight matters. They can add a bunch of armor but then the cars range is shot and it's too slow. It's already a heavy vehicle.