Mar 30 2010

Cop Cars: The Last Green Frontier

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

As any watcher of cop shows knows, it takes an exceptionally powerful and sturdy police vehicle to outrun all the robbers, dope dealers and terrorists who infest our cities. To insist that our squad cars be green as well might be asking a little much.

But consider the fact that the typical police vehicle gets only 8 to 14 miles per gallon while racking up as many as 90,000 miles a year. Multiply that by more than 425,000 law enforcement vehicles in the United States, and you have a lot of burned fuel and pollution emitted in the course of safeguarding our streets.

The bottom line, according to Indiana-based startup Carbon Motors, is that “law enforcement in the United States burns through 1.5 billion gallons of gasoline annually and emits over 14 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year. And taxpayers are shelling out over $4 billion each year for fuel expenditures alone, a number that only increases as the cost of fuel rises.”

Fortunately, the hot market for next-generation police vehicles to replace the standard Ford Crown Victoria is beginning to include some green alternatives to the usual heavy muscle cars.

Carbon Motors, for example aims to introduce a clean but powerful diesel-engine vehicle whose acceleration, durability, suspension, brakes and crash resistance all meet the special needs of the law enforcement market. 

Last week, Carbon Motors announced a deal with BMW to buy almost a quarter million of the German automaker's high-performance diesel engines. They should provide enough torque to accelerate even a rugged, heavy squad car from 0 to 60 in six seconds. Best of all, they should help achieve Carbon Motors’ promise of “up to a 40 percent improvement in fuel economy.”

Now it looks like Carbon Motors might face some stiff competition in the green cop car market. General Motors is talking about rolling out the Vauxhall Ampera, an “electric extended range vehicle,” in the UK in 2012. A GM spokesman told an auto blog that there is “huge interest” from London’s Metropolitan Police Force in buying the plug-in hybrid vehicle for its fleet. 

Hollywood take note: the time may soon right for another remake of Bullitt, this time featuring a tough but environmentally correct detective flying over the hills of San Francisco as he chases dirty criminals in his clean electric car.

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