Pro tip: Plug in your Tesla S when clocking off, lest you run out of juice mid hot pursuit A police chase came to an untimely end this week when the officer in pursuit realised his Tesla S was about to run out of juice. Cops were chasing a suspect vehicle through the South Bay of San Francisco. The officer radioed for another vehicle to take over and embarrassingly the audio was picked up by police scanner site. …
"Yes, because when in hot pursuit of Mr Baddie and you run out of petrol because someone forgot to fill it up the shift before, Mr Baddie will just pull over while you fill it up.
The difference is that if you notice at teh start of your shift that the petrol is low you can quite practically fill it up. If you notice the charge is low you need to put it on charge and get a different vehicle.
The 'study' if we can call it that which compares the Tesla to a standard Ford Explorer seems flawed and perhaps corrupt/fixed from the start. The vehicles are simply not comparable and for many purposes the explorer seems massively superior in terms of capabilities. Perhaps only in highway pursuit does the Tesla have an advantage but that cannot be the primary/intended role of the Explorer. It seems like a fix or perhaps just a publicity stunt. Even in this role it seems that the Tesla simply does not meet the needs. It has an offical range of 370 miles if the role involved crusing on the highway it simply does not have the range to do this for long enough especialy keeping some sort of margin and recharging takes too long ulike a conventional vehcle with which refueling would be practical.
"Perhaps only in highway pursuit does the Tesla have an advantage"
Probably not, given the traffic in and around Fremont. Also, the Explorer is a taller seat, allowing you to see traffic ahead of you over the top of other cars. For another thing, it has a higher ground clearance, allowing you to go around stopped traffic in the verge/brush/tules and generally go over curbs and other hazards that would trip up a Tesla. To say nothing of the emergency equipment that an SUV can carry with easy accessibility.
I see the difference, but does it really matter in this very specific situation? If you can't move for the five minutes or so it takes to refuel a traditional vehicle, the person you're chasing probably has gained quite a lead. So you'd still have to contact someone else to chase them while you refueled. For many other situations where speed is important but not critical, the gas engine's ability to refuel faster could be an important factor.
"one “hot spare” in the pool wouldn’t be beyond reason"
Or so you'd think, but ... The folks in charge of the purse strings won't allow even N+1 ... when a car is down, that officer is usually "assigned other duties" until the car is back up. Having a car "sitting on the shelf" is absolutely unthinkable these days. Think of the wasted insurance and maintenance money on an unused vehicle that also cost money ...
Besides, typically one gas/petrol car runs two shifts, with two separate drivers. With the battery powered option, it's one car per driver because of charge time, doubling the size of the fleet for the same coverage. Again, the bean-counters don't like this option very much.
How many pool car spares would you need for electric cars versus the same for petrol cars?
I'm guessing, in this kind of instance, a lot more, thus killing the savings you would otherwise gain.
Especially as police vehicles are often used 24 hours a day, over different shifts.
You've gone from, say, 10 petrol cars taking 10 minutes to refill throughout the day, to 30 electric cars where maybe 2/3rds of the fleet are out of action at any one time to charge.
> How many pool car spares would you need for electric cars versus the same for petrol cars?
Absolutely.
The instant case wasn't a case of the entire police fleet having been converted to PEV, therefore in the case for this story, that isn't relevant.
However, if (when?) that becomes the case, then yes, it will be more difficult, as you could expect 4-8 hours (depending on vehicle range and how hard it has been run) downtime a day, which would dramatically increase the number of 'hot spare' vehicles. But could the reduction in running costs of PEVs vs ICE allow them to afford to have more hot spares? Maybe, maybe not. I just hope they sort this issue out before they make a decision on whether to convert to a full PEV fleet.
They only have the one Tesla - the article indicates it is the first EV in the fleet. So there is no spare. If they have to have their one and only EV out on patrol (say for political reasons), noticing that it wasn't charged at the beginning of the shift simply means the shift will be shorter than expected.
It's a learning curve switching from IC power to EVs, especially for managing a fleet.
> I see the difference, but does it really matter in this very specific situation? If you can't move for the five minutes or so it takes to refuel a traditional vehicle, the person you're chasing probably has gained quite a lead.
You'd hope that part of the standard pre-patrol checklist would be to check the fuel levels!
The thing is that it's (currently at least) much quicker and easier to refill an ICE fuel tank, and it gives you much greater range, so there's far less risk of running out mid-pursuit.
Equally, if you are out on patrol, it's one thing to take 5 minutes to refill your fuel tank[*], and another to sit plugged into a charger for half an hour. Assuming you can find one which is compatible, and which doesn't already have someone else's car plugged into it!
At a glance, the Ford Explorer has an 18 (US) gallon fuel tank which is good for around 500 miles, versus 300 miles or so for the Tesla.
Equally, it'd be interesting to see how their ranges compare when in pursuit mode too - i.e. high speed maneuvers and/or lots of stops/starts/brake slamming. That kind of stuff has a nasty impact on range for both ICE and electric vehicles, though as per above, at least an ICE vehicle will generally have a much larger reserve to burn through.
[*] US fuel pumps are limited to 10 gallons a minute. So it's quite feasible for a police car to be in and out in under five minutes, even if they do dally to pick up coffee and donuts...
Then too, it looks like Teslsa have actually banned "government" use of their public supercharging network, though the actual article is paywalled, so it's not clear if that covers the emergency services...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Supercharger#cite_note-4
"the Ford Explorer has an 18 (US) gallon fuel tank"
Because of the distances involved here Out West[0], many (most?) jurisdictions equip their patrol vehicles with extended range tanks. I don't know if Fremont does or not (it's only 75 square miles or so), but given the gridlock they experience twice a day, 5 days a week (+occasional weekends), it wouldn't surprise me.
[0] Wherever that is ...
... I find the convenience of cordless fools makes spending money on several batteries and matching chargers worth it. It helps if you standardize on one of the major vendors, so all batteries fit every tool. Some of the tools are actually more powerful than their corded counterparts, which doesn't hurt any. (Example: The Makita 36V 7 1/4" worm-drive saw is much faster ripping plywood than my Skilsaw model 77 ... I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't prove it to myself. The Mag77 is pretty much retired now).
That said, somehow I seriously doubt anybody is going to have a Tesla and a couple of spare batteries for long distance trips any time soon. What are they going to do, carry them around on a trailer?
It's actually a strength of battery operated vehicles: They are fully refueled at start of shift, so officers never needed to visit a petrol pump - IF the vehicle is connected to the mains while at the station house. But as the article briefly notes, ignoring fuel levels never ends well regardless of whether you store the energy as petrol, diesel, electrons, hydrogen, or a wound-up rubber band.
"CB radio scanners"
Not CB radio. We (on this side of the pond) have available VHF/UHF analog/digital trunked radio scanners. And not many police departments encrypt their traffic (it decreases their comms reliability). Even an SDR dongle and some clever software will get you a good bit of the way there.
There are some streaming audio web sites that rebroadcast police and fire radio traffic. So you don't even need to invest in a radio.
used to be duplexed with the base station operating around 451-453 Mhz and mobiles operating 13.9 Mhz higher (so if you hear the base on 452.8 the mobiles were on 466.7).
then they added a pitch inversion system (low audio frequencies become high and vice versa) which was referred to as Crypton.
then they switched to tetra and I gave up listening
Clearly no one spotted the irony bit I thought a joke icon would've spoiled it with obviousness.
Was anyone able to get my real point that something with the technological prowess of a Tesla was apparently fitted with a radio transceiver that could be easily overheard? I'm thinking, maybe the police were even using analogue radio tech here.
it is often much easier to tell people the name of the nearest big city rather than my own Walnut Creek.
Ah, where they made those shareware collection CDs. At least if it's the Walnut Creek out of the probably dozens of Walnut Creeks across the US where they made those CD's.
Still wouldn't have known where it actually was, that is until you mentioned its location just now.
Yes, Walnut Creek CDROM was based in Walnut Creek, California.
I used those CDs to lend an air of legitimacy to my early consultancy ... Just having FreeBSD or Slackware on an actual published CD often was enough in the eyes of the owner to let me move a business from MS-DOS (with or without Windows) over to *nix. Most of those businesses (the survivors, anyway) still run on FOSS ...
If you missed "those CDs" back in the day, or if you just want a trip down memory lane (or to have a look at what your parents are talking about), you can download many Walnut Creek CDROM ISO images from here.
For those of you who don't click on links:
https://archive.org/details/walnutcreekcdrom
Interesting choice of comparison vehicles on the one hand an electric sedan 'cruiser' on the other a relatively large SUV which no doubt carries a lot of equipment to deal with traffic incidents. Which would fare better in one of those PIT manoeuvres do you think and hopefully not set on fire.
That's a standard (in most of the US, anyway) police "push bumper" designed to gently push a stalled vehicle out of the traffic lanes (over to the road shoulder, etc) while causing little or no damage to either vehicle. The taller pieces in the center are because car/SUV/pickup truck bumpers tend to be a variety of heights.
We see the same stupidity with computers. English lit majors, when faced with screens saying "press any key to continue" suddenly become neanderthals who can't figure out how to read or press buttons. Freaking engineers, who can design and manufacture marvels of innovation, can't figure out where to put their USB stick; or worse how to click on a screen that says "Click here to proceed".
I mean, come on this is simple stuff. Car no fuel, car no go. Regardless of whether it's electricity or gas, the same holds true. Even the most doughnut-crazed cop should be able to figure that out; and given that these cars go as far as - if not more - than their equivalent in gas, surely this is a no brainer?
That wouldn't have happened in Jamaica. Regular patrol cops would be two to a vehicle, each with a 9-mm semi-auto pistol of some type (there are a variety in service, ranging from Browning Hi-Powers to SIGs and S&Ws) and there'd be a rifle in the cop car, usually a variety of AR-15. Specialised cops, such as flying squad, crime eradication squad, and the like usually travel four to a car, each with two semi-auto pistols and either a submachine gun (Uzi or Colt Commando, the SMG version of the AR-15, usually; some unlucky blokes are still stuck with Sterlings) or a rifle, again usually an AR-15, each. Standard operational procedure for the special cops has been since the early 1970s to empty one weapons' mag at the target, get out another weapon, empty that mag, repeat until out of weapons, reload, start again. Claudius Massop, for example, was shot 42 times 'resisting arrest'. If the Mobile Reserve rolls on the incident, then there'll be cops with Barret 0.50 rifles and GPMGs. If necessary they'll call for support from the army, and one or more armoured car with a 0.50 MG or a 40-mm grenade launcher will show up. On one spectacular case an Army helicopter showed, was shot at by the bad guys, went back to base and got a few machine guns and came back and did some close air support. (No, I'm not making that up. It happened about 15 years ago in Rose Hall, just outside of Montego Bay. A joint police-army force in company strength ran into problems and solved them with an air strike...) Police in Jamaica get away with things that American cops can only dream of.
See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/11/jamaica-police-military-sweeping-powers-zones-of-special-operations for more. The pic at the top is of Mobile Reserve policemen carrying AR-15s.
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