We’re often told that electric vehicles offer far lower operational costs than ICE-powered vehicles, thanks to the fact that they don’t require fuel or as much maintenance. It’s typically much cheaper to charge an electric vehicle than refuel an ICE one, which is great for consumers. But for fleet vehicles that rack up far more miles, something like this Tesla police car makes even more sense.
The Freemont Police Department in California purchased their first Tesla police car, a 2014 Model S sedan, back in 2018 for $61,478.50. The goal was to test the vehicle and see if it was less expensive to operate on an annual basis over a traditional ICE-powered police car, as well as meet the needs of the department.
Freemont just released their findings from this study after over a year on the road, and they’re quite interesting, to say the least. The Tesla police car wound up saving the department $4,097 in fuel costs, versus the cost of electricity used to charge it, over a gas-powered Ford police pursuit vehicle (PPV), according to the study. The annual cost of maintenance was higher by $1,950, however. Regardless, the total annual operational cost for the Tesla was $2,147 less than the Ford.
Another bonus is the fact that using the Model S police car eliminates 42,198 pounds of C02 from the air annually. And the Model S was in service 27 days less than the Ford, which is a big reduction in downtime. However, there are a couple of drawbacks related to the EV worth mentioning.
For starters, the Model S, though it was purchased used, cost nearly $21,000 more initially. That means the department would have to wait for a little over five years before it would begin to see a return on its investment. Finally, the Model S doesn’t go as far on a charge – 265 miles versus the Ford’s range of 344 miles on a tank of gas.
Thus, when it comes to police fleets employing electric vehicles, at least for now, they require much higher upfront costs but those can be recouped over time.
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Comments
It may be fine for urban patrol but not for extended highway patrol. Remember the one that konked out and the bad guy got away?
I hope that Tesla got their suspension issue sorted…?
For whatever great things the Tesla S has to offer – ruggedness isn’t one of them….. Especially when out of warranty – and then things get really really pricey to fix – and I’m not even going to address any collisions – lets hope they don’t have one since the costs to repair are out of this world. As a for instance, the gearmotor which ‘presents’ the 4 door handles when you walk up to the car costs $1200 per door, and all 4 of them will strip ($4800 per occurrence) at the first sleeting event.
I would like to see how much they can use the vehicle in anything more than mild police service, and then see what their ‘unexpected and unplanned for’ maintenance cost is.
I imagine it is not going to be as bad as my former 2011 Tesla Roadster – electrically it was fine, but just parts of the car wearing out made this the most expensive to repair car I ever owned.
Hard driving police service? I’d expect having to replace the gearbox a few times a year.
Will the criminals wait for it to recharge;)