Ezra Dyer: Thought Pursuit

From the June 2023 issue of Car and Driver.

Where I live, the police drive some heavy-duty machinery. There’s the odd Ford Taurus hanging in there, but mainly it’s Chevy Tahoes, Dodge Durangos, and Ford Explorers, with a healthy smattering of V-8 Dodge Chargers. One day, while I was daydreaming about municipal budgets (as I am wont to do), I wondered: Would cops drive something smaller and more efficient if they got to share in the savings from a lower purchase price? And if so, what would that number need to be? If I were a cop, I’d think $1000 could persuade me to drive an Escape patrol car. But I am not a cop—I had to turn in my badge because I play by nobody’s rules but my own—so I asked some police to join me in this thought experiment.

The first thing I learned is that everybody misses the Ford Crown Victoria. The second is that police chases are still way more common than I thought, and thus top speed is actually relevant. One sheriff’s deputy told me, “I drive a police-package Durango governed to 132 mph, and I just chased a Ford F-250 diesel that, speedwise, straight smashed everything we had. So we need something that can both take a hit to the body and pass on the straights to set up rolling blocks and get ahead to block intersections.” To answer your obvious follow-up question, yes, I live in Hazzard County.

But even if you put a premium on speed, cops could do a lot better than a Durango—and for less money. My town budgets $58,000 per police car and is buying four this year. A Ford Escape ST-Line Select costs $36,535. Figure $5000 for lights and graphics, and the town could save almost $66,000 on those four vehicles. Divvied up, that’s about $2000 per cop on the payroll, and the taxpayers would fuel cars that get 26 mpg instead of a Tahoe’s 17 mpg or an Explorer’s 20 mpg. As for speed, the Escape with the 250-hp 2.0-liter engine can hit 60 mph in 5.7 seconds. Asked what the Escape’s ungoverned top speed might be, our tech team said, “About 150 mph, possibly 155.” Maybe you wouldn’t want to set up a roadblock with an Escape, but I wouldn’t want to stare down an oncoming F-250 from behind the wheel of a Durango either.

So, clearly, I am a genius, and everybody should love this plan, but I have to admit that the fuel savings aren’t as dramatic as I’d hoped. Gaining even 10 mpg doesn’t make much difference in a municipal budget. But how about buying no fuel at all? Now we’re talking! Would police ever embrace electric patrol cars, though? To find out, I had another local cop drive an EV. And, to stack the deck in my favor, it was a 576-hp Kia EV6 GT.

This particular officer has a deep automotive background, including karting, and he owns a Camaro SS. He’d never driven an EV. His first reaction: “This is unbelievably smooth and quiet.” If you’re in a car for hours every day, an EV offers a more serene work environment. On the taxpayer-savings side, there are no oil changes or engine air filters, and brakes should last significantly longer thanks to regen. For our local department, an average day means driving 100 miles, so range and charge times likely aren’t an issue.

Oh, and for speed? He pulls to a stop and presses the GT button on the Kia’s steering wheel; we’re doing 60 mph practically before either of us can even remark on how quickly that happened. Heavy and solid, powerful, great to drive all day—it turns out EVs make inherently good police cars.

So never mind the Escape. Ford has unveiled the F-150 Lightning Pro SSV, the modern Crown Vic Police Interceptor. Lightnings are big, quick, and comfortable. And, most important for the rest of us, they have really distinctive headlights.