Per this story about the policeman’s beloved Crown Vic gas hogs starting to get expensive. Are there any high MPG vehicles that could be used as effective police pursuit vehicles?
As a caveat obviously you could stick a policeman on a road rocket, but it would not be as practical crusing around wise as a Harley Davidson. Is there any vechicle that can cruise, carry some hardware, and still get up and go when necessary? Like a police equivalent of a ricer I suppose. What do police in other high gas price countries use to get the job done?
Soon we’ll all have these patroling our streets.
Really an agency doesn’t need 100% of their cars to be ass hauling fuel hoggers. Just as police departments realized that they don’t need sworn officers with guns for about 80% of what they’re using cops for (ie delayed burglaries, missing person reports, etc).
An agency would benefit from making at least 50% of their fleet some kind of fuel efficient car without regards to speed.
As Bear_Nenno suggested:
You could redefine your police vehicle roles.
You have a small number of high-power pursuit vehicles, driven by specially trained police officers.
You have a larger fleet of standard patrol cars, driven by normal police officers.
And you have a small number of prisoner transport vehicles, driven by normal officers.
The use of specialised prisoner pickup/transport vehicles allows you to reduce the size of both your patrol and pursuit vehicles as neither the pursuit or patrol vehicles will need to carry prisoners in the back, thereby increasing fuel efficiency.
The patrol cars could then be reduced in size considerably, even down to Ford Focus or smaller.
The pursuit cars should be higher performance cars (as you’ll be making savings on the patrol cars), Mitsubishi Evo or Subaru Impreza (the Impreza is more efficient than the Crown Vic too) make good pursuit cars and aren’t hellaciously expensive (the bigger engined Volvos are good too as are BMWs), and the prisoner pickup/transport vehicles could be converted delivery vans as you just need to fit a bench(es) and a cage(s).
Combining patrol, pursuit and prisoner transport in one vehicle makes it difficult to increase the fuel effiency whilst maintaining the level of utility.
Meh. Even if you didn’t bother restructuring the fleet, you could just swap out the cruisers for something like a Volvo C70 police edition and get about 38mpg.
Incidentally, the MSN website link refused to load in Opera, but worked in Internet Explorer. Odd, eh?
It took me a minute to figure out that LEO was supposed to stand for Law Enforcement Officer, not Low Earth Orbit.
Hey, I know right where that is! That’s in Old Town between the Charles Bridge and Old Town Square. 
Thank you for that.
Happy to help.
Presumably the constables and gendarmerie in Europe aren’t driving around in rear-wheel drive Crown Vics. Maybe someone with knowledge of across-the-pond law enforcement could fill us in?
Cops in Britain drive Ford Focus-sized cars. Vauxhall (Opel) Astra diesels, mostly, nowadays.
I’ve never understood why American law enforcement agencies are so in love with the Crown Vic/Chevy Caprice-type land barges.
They’re slow, they handle poorly, they provide oodles of space that police officers don’t need, and they cost about a million times more than a hundred cars that could do the job better.
Will the increased cost of having to maintain and stock parts for two models of cars be offset by any nominal amount of fuel savings?
IMHO, better driving habits would go much further. Cops tend to like to gun it whenever they can. How about if they followed the speed limit (like we citizens are supposed to do) when not running code 3 to a call?
Me too. Picturing a car being driven fast enough to take off… :eek:
As Panda cars.
They have Volvo V70 T5, BMW M5, BMW X5 and a host of others for traffic patrols, armed response and other specialist uses.
They also use Ford Transits and Mercedes Sprinters for prisoner transport.
It’s very rare now for a prisoner to be transported in a police car, they almost always call for a van. The police also use specialist drivers for pursuits, they don’t allow normal officers to carry out risky traffic interventions due to concerns over safety.
Wikipedia has a reasonable article on the different vehicles in use.
Patrol cars here in Baden-Württemberg state are mostly VW Passat station wagons, plus a lot of vans. They are only lightly modified, in order not to compromise resale value - even the police livery often is foil not paint. From what I saw in other German states it’s mainly midrange station wagons (Passat and Golf Variant, and their Mercedes/BMW/Opel counterparts), and also a lot of vans. Relatively few sedans. This would be a typical lineup as of a few years ago. High speed pursuit does not seem to be much of a consideration.
BTW I did not think of Low Earth Orbit when first reading the thread title, but of pursuing lions.
Police agencies get a pretty good deal on those cars due to volume purchases, IIRC. Police Interceptor Crown Vics aren’t exactly slow, but they aren’t going to keep up with a sports car all that well, either, BUT…you can’t outrun the radio.
I think that the space/storage consideration for police is a real issue here. Cops carry all kinds of stuff in their trunks, so they need a good sized trunk, and cops also make a lot of arrests with their everyday cruisers, so they need a back seat large enough for that, as well as four doors.
They do handle crappy, but their solid rear axle makes for a very predictable reaction from the car under duress, so they are easy to train in for pursuits.
I’m sure they can get a better car than what they have though, just for MPG’s sake. My 1996 Crown Vic I used to own got about 18MPG.
EDIT: Also, wouldn’t having to call for a prisoner transport vehicle negate the savings in gas for having to use two vehicles to report to the scene of a crime, particularly if it’s just to arrest a single individual which the Crown Vic is equipped to do already?
If you used a diesel vehicle for prisoner transport then you could get very good mpg, and if the vehicle ran on biodiesel then the enviromental impact would be even less. You could also run it on LPG or some other greener fuel, as power/speed isn’t a concern.
Obviously you’d need a different vehicle for other roles (pursuit etc), but there’s no reason to have a massive patrol car for routine calls.
As for carrying equipment, how much does a community police officer need? Surely not more than could be fitted into the very reasonable boot of the Focus?
Seriously, there’s absolutely no reason for cops to be driving around in Crown Vics. I’ve always wondered why all the cabs in NYC are also using the same thing. They’d get such better gas mileage with a hybrid, and honestly, who cares what kind of car a taxi is? I’d wager that a large majority of cab rides are with only one person.
Anyway, but cops need some get up and go. Really any sport-oriented Sedan would be better. You can’t compare it to the Interceptor because that’s modified. I’m sure a Ford Focus could be turbocharged to be made snappier.
The problem is, as always, Americans look at cars as an image thing. I got a VW Jetta in 2002 and was the brunt of a few jokes because gas wasn’t even 2 dollars a gallon then. Yet now who has the last laugh when my car routinely gets 45 MPG?
Cops tend to be more of the macho type, and you can bet your ass they’d rather not be caught dead driving around in a little EuroBox, which is why they’ve been driving Crown Vics all this time. Really there’s no reason for it as any smaller car could be made to drive faster and handle better. I’ve been to many places in Europe, and the standard is for police to drive around in something the size of a Ford Focus or a VW Gold. Police rarely drive around in full-sized sedans. The move to the Chevy Impala is a step in this direction. It isn’t needlessly big which reaps benefits in performance and maybe efficiency. Cops have to carry a lot of stuff, and I’m not suggesting they stop carrying people they arrest in their cars, but the cavernous space of a Crown Vic isn’t required. If they need to carry more than two prisoners, then they should call the paddy wagon.
Not disputing your other arguments, but I care. I’m 6’2". I only fit in the back seat of certain cars. I never really worried about it, since most taxis — even non-Crown Vics — are reasonable. However, these things started showing up as taxis in a place that I vacation a lot. One morning we’d pre-arranged a taxi to get my wife and I and out luggage to the airport, and they sent one of these! The driver went back for his personal pickup truck, and we made our flight.
Consider that about 1/3 of the cabs in NYC are police cars that were bought from the NYPD and turned into hacks. Maybe the NYPD figured that the resale value of the Crown Vics to the cabbies was good enough to keep them around.
The Taxi and Limousine Commission has to certify certain models of cars to be used as cabs. The Crown Vic is a longstanding certified vehicle. That being said, the Crown Vic and the Chevy Caprice make lousy cabs and should all be trashed.
There is a mandate to convert a large portion (1/3 or 1/2) of the NYC cab fleet to hybrid vehicles in the near future. With the spike in gas prices, the taxi operators are now faced with a problem of there not being enough hybrid vehicles available. There may need to be an extension to allow them to comply.
I’ve seen NYS Troopers using Chevy Camaros to catch speeders so it’s not as if they are all driving Crown Vics. I don’t know if they are still using them.
It is logical for cabs and cops to go to hybrid vehicles. There’s the mistaken notion that hybrids are econoboxes. To the contrary, they provide extraordinary performance while getting better gas mileage. The combination of the gas engine and electric motor will give excellent acceleration and speed. Check out the Lexus 400h.
Now you have to figure out who in the state legislature is getting the biggest kickback from the auto manufacturers.