The NSW Police highway patrol will now be able to sneak up behind motorists silently, after taking delivery of its first electric vehicle.
The NSW Police highway patrol has taken delivery of its first electric car – a BMW IX SUV.
And while the vehicle appears to have earned its stripes, it’s not over the line yet as a fully operational highway patrol vehicle.
Photos shared on social media – on the New South Wales Police Vehicles page on Facebook – show the BMW IX wearing NSW Police highway patrol markings and a blue-and-red light bar.
But the callsign on the front fenders – HWP 150 – reveals the electric SUV is, for now, either a community engagement vehicle or evaluation vehicle.
Other cars to wear the same callsign or a similar callsign in previous years include the Ford Mustang V8 – which was ruled out for highway patrol work because Ford, at the time, had an overzealous overheating sensor in the transmission – and the original Chrysler 300C SRT V8 sedan, which did end up earning its stripes and was deployed as a NSW Police highway patrol vehicle.
A Holden Special Vehicles GTS and a Ford Falcon GT were other ‘halo’ vehicles to wear the HWP150 callsign or similar.
Such vehicles are not usually equipped with radar units and police data terminals, however officers behind the wheel of the BMW IX can still issue tickets for most traffic offences.
The BMW IX is the first electric car to join the NSW Police highway patrol fleet, though Drive understands other vehicles such as the Kia EV6 have recently been assessed.
The example on duty is a BMW IX, xDrive40 Sport all-wheel-drive powered by two electric motors (one front, one rear) with combined outputs of 240kW and 630Nm.
The claimed 0 to 100km/h time of 6.1 seconds makes it about one second slower than the Holden Commodore V8 and Ford Falcon XR6 Turbo previously used by highway patrol.
The BMW IX xDrive40 Sport is priced from $141,900 before on-road costs, though it is unclear what fleet discount may have been applied to this example.
It is powered by a 77kWh battery pack said to deliver a maximum driving range of 420km on a full charge in ideal conditions. Energy consumption is relatively high – 22.5kWh/100km – about 50 per cent more than a Tesla Model Y Performance (15.6 kWh).
The BMW IX operated by the NSW Police highway patrol division comes after Victoria Police added a Tesla Model X to its highway patrol fleet in June 2019.
Tesla Model X joins Victorian Highway Patrol fleet
As with the BMW IX operated by NSW Police, the Tesla Model X is used by Victoria Police highway patrol as a community engagement vehicle, and to better understand how electric cars might be used in traffic enforcement in the future.
Aside from a handful of Tesla cars operated by California police, the largest deployment of electric cars by a major metropolitan police force is a fleet of 200 Ford Mustang Mach E SUVs on patrol with the New York Police Department.
Above: Ford Mustang Mach E NYPD patrol car. Photos by: Code One Photography/Facebook.
After announcing the program a year ago, the Ford Mustang Mach E electric cars are finally on patrol in New York.
Despite the large number of vehicles, the Ford Mustang Mach E is still in a trial phase while authorities assess the merits – and the drawbacks – of relying on electric cars for general duties police work.
While the Ford Mustang Mach E appeared to be well received by NYPD officers in a recent television news segment, a photo of one of the police cars running out of power has already been posted on social media (above).
“It will be a slower progression to electric than it is for a retail customer to adjust to, just because the vehicle is used (by police) in a much different way,” Lindsey Bertino, the police brand marketing manager at Ford, said in an earlier TV interview.
One of the biggest adjustments for police is the extra power from electric motors – and the higher wear on brakes because the vehicles are so much heavier than petrol-powered cars.
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