Friday, January 05, 2018

A possible good use for electric cars

Obviously, if you've read my work, I'm no fan of electric cars, especially not when my pockets are being picked to buy them for people who are richer than I.  That said, I can think of one area where it might be smart to use them; police work.


Think about it.  Cruisers typically spend most of their time with the engine idling, punctuated by often-high-speed bursts to apprehend speeders and the like.  The engine idles simply because you want to keep lubricants circulating and (more importantly) the officer comfortable.


Well, with an electric car, you keep the officer warm with a seat heater (or chiller, they exist) run off the battery, and with zero warmup time, many electric cars can go 0-60 quicker than anything short of a supercar.  They might not be a good choice for, say, rural Nebraska, where officers might indeed drive more than a few hundred miles in a day, but for ordinary traffic enforcement, where an officer might drive 100 miles or less in a day, it would be just the ticket. 


Moreover, if indeed a typical black & white is idling most of the day, I would guess you could get the price premium for an electric car back quickly simply from gasoline savings. 

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