Last week a committee with the Air Quality Management District from South Pasadena California approved a Half A Million grant to swap out its entire police fleet for Teslas.
According to ABC News 7 it's a part of an infrastructure project that was approved by the city council last year.
From what we have researched, South Pasadena will be leasing a total of 20 Telsas, the Model Y and Model 3 vehicles for 60 months. Personally we hope it will be defunct after that. Nothing like throwing your money away on a lease when they could be going to a good police vehicle.
Keep in mind that South Pasadena, California is not the only police departments in the nation to make this switch to use some Teslas, in Falmouth, Massachusets and Fremont, California.
Domenica K. Megerdichian, (Deputy City Manager at City of South Pasadena) said the city saw Tesla as the best fit to convert to electric vehicles. Really?
"We looked at a number of options and many of our fleet are at end of life or nearing end of life," said Megerdichian. "It's actually part of our vision statement that we are committed to an environmentally stable future," said Megerdichian.
According to the city, residents can see some of the new police Tesla units patrolling the streets in the next month or so.
What we want to see is the next police chase in one of these. You know when it runs out of batteries. You may think this is some car nuts non-eco green statement but it happened!
In Fremont California a Police driving a Tesla Model S became involved in a police pursuit it radioed dispatch to say that the electric vehicle warned that it had only 6 miles of battery life left and that he may not be able to continue in the chase.
We also would think that an electric police car would be very limited on range not only on the driving range but how long it would last with all the electrical items on board.
According to many officers including Lt. Doug Treat of the Lake Oswego Police states. "On a normal 10-hour shift, a patrol vehicle drives between 50 and 100 miles. During that same 10-hour shift, a patrol vehicle can idle for 3-5 hours, adding an additional 75-125 miles each patrol shift of additional wear and tear on the engine.
We are often asked why we have leave the vehicle idling. One of the reasons is that with the amount of electronics in the car — radio, radar, computer and video camera, etc. — the electrical demand on the system is constant. Without the vehicle operating, it would drain the battery and the electrical system could never keep up."
So what about the long term on these EV Police cars? According to CBS News and Jalopnik back in 2016, the LAPD paid at Least $2.9 Million for 100 BMW i3EVs and it barely used them AND they were found to be misused!
The Insider later found out that 28 of those LAPD cars were up for sale at Century BMW in Alhambra, California. All the i3 had less then 10,000 miles on them and were selling for dirt cheap at $19k. But wait there are rumors there are still plans to spend another $7.2 million on this same program in the next phases. Say what?
That makes us think why would any police department want an Electric Car? Just think if they had to dispatch a large amount of officers to a location and what if their cars were not charged? What about in a power outage or a natural disaster with there is no power? What will they drive? We just think people who put these policies in place like the City Council of Pasadena and Megerdichian the Deputy City Manager at City of South Pasadena have no idea about real world scenarios. These over paid politicians think it is the best fit for an "environmentally stable future" however what about the needs of the people when a true emergency comes about? We say they are only worried about their virtue signaling and "look at me" moment and oblivious to real life, life and death situations.
We guess the conclusion for the EV police car is... "Well you died but we are going green that's all that matters."
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