>"... 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...

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.

that's a much better link.

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

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

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.

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!

The article says they are using Model Ys

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…

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

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.

> EVs are still on the early adopter phase.

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

The objections are about Teslas, not EVs in general.

"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."

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

"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".