Pretty interesting, and not surprising to most folks on this site that hybrids will save on gas and need less repairs than most gas only cars. Now I wonder if they'll also use plug-in hybrids to lower costs even further. Hybrid Police Cars Replacing Crown Vics: No Longer An Anomaly
Last week, our local EV club had a presentation given by the county administration. They had a stack of slides showing impressive savings from both fuel & maintenance costs by switching over. It was a slow process. The veteran officers weren't exactly welcoming to the change. Newer ones help changed their mind. The very last county-owned Crown Vic here will be replaced by a hybrid this March.
The old Crown Vics were body on frame, which meant much cheaper to repair after accidents. The trick is to get the police to stop crashing I think maybe a special police version of the avalon hybrid might be better as its stretched. The crown vic was a longer car, and really we should be thinking innocent before proven guilty, so no reason to cramp the suspects. The crown vic was an old design. The camry and avalon hybrids accelerate faster than the old crown vics. They are probably harder to work on, but need less maintenance, so fewer higher trained mechanics needed, which saves money too. You can't beat how much less fuel these will use when they are sitting around idling which is a big percentage of duty, unless you go phev ... but the camry and avalon accelerate faster than the fusion energi and sonata phev, and that is probably more important than the fuel, they will be saving a lot of fuel as it is. Good choice for a lower tco vehicle.
fusion might work. they'll never get cops to plug in the car, plug ins would just be a waste unless they had parking spots with wireless.
The Ford police cars available now, trims of the Taurus and Explorer can be purchased with the 2L Ecoboost. It falls short of hybrid numbers, specially in the city, but is far better than what the Crown Vics got. Though, there was a factory CNG Vic available.
