A California company is advertising ‘tactical response’ Tesla Cybertruck upgrades for police cruisers, including shotgun racks and sirens.
Bit of background on police cars. Mechanically, they’re not made to be especially fast, nor necessarily accelerate very quickly, nor handle particularly well. The police package modifications have more to do with endurance. A cop car isn’t going to do 180MPH, but it’s going to be able to do 110 for way longer than a regular production vehicle. A alot of that comes down to extra cooling: engine, transmission, power steering. Cop cars have steel wheels because they bend instead of shattering, and you can still drive on a bent wheel that holds air.
Does the Cybertruck scream “reliable and high endurance”?
Police vehicles also need to be generally multipurpose, to carry weapons, first aid, other gear, and detainees as necessary. This means they need to have enough room in the back seat for a partition, and accessible cargo space so that any particular thing can be quickly accessed. I can’t speak to the back seat of a Cybertruck, but that silly body line at the front of the bed makes a huge part of its cargo space useless. If you want to access stuff that’s up there, you’re going to have to climb in the back and crawl over everything, or unload a bunch of shit that’s in the way, like me looking for the fucking mayonaisse in my refrigerator after my wife has jammed it way too full of other shit. Maybe a Cybertruck could stand in for a State Police car that runs the interstates instead of a Dodge Charger. Maybe.
Ever noticed how lots of police departments label their cars in very low contrast lettering? That’s so they can blend into traffic without being instantly noticeable as a police car. I think it’s obvious what I’m pointing out here.
I also don’t think that a pure electric vehicle would ever be used for actual police work. Having to stick it on a charger for an hour, at least once a day, takes the vehicle and its driver out of service for much longer than just filling up a gas tank. Yeah, you might be able to coordinate the charging with “paperwork time,” but it’s still something worth considering.
tl;dr: The Cybertruck is the worst police vehicle any department could ever choose.
Ever noticed how lots of police departments label their cars in very low contrast lettering? That’s so they can blend into traffic without being instantly noticeable as a police car. I think it’s obvious what I’m pointing out here.
you mean that automatic siren built into the body paneling isn’t gonna help them blend in?
