Exclusive: NSW Police Highway Patrol to trial electric cars, here’s how they will earn their stripes

NSW Police are poised to embark on a ground-breaking trial of electric vehicles for highway patrol use to assess their suitability for police work – to supplement the existing fleet of patrol cars.

Police in California are already trialling a fleet of Teslas, and New York police are trialling a fleet of Ford Mustang Mach E electric cars as general patrol vehicles.

Closer to home, Victoria Police have tested a Tesla and Queensland Police have a small number of Kia EV6 electric cars.

However, the electric cars in the other Australian jurisdictions are largely community engagement vehicles – rather than fully operational police vehicles.

The electric cars under consideration by NSW Police Highway Patrol have been put through the same stringent series of tests – inside the Police Driver Training Centre in Goulburn – as the petrol and diesel patrol vehicles which have already earned their stripes.

The tests inside the driver training facility are designed to mimic real-world highway patrol use – and include a series of braking, cornering and performance tests conducted by highway patrol driver training instructors and technical representatives from NSW Police Fleet.

Five vehicles have so far been put through a series of exhaustive tests over three days to determine whether they will make it to the next phase and be trialled as a fully operational police vehicle.

The electric vehicles in the first round of assessments included:

• Hyundai Ioniq 5 N
• Kia EV6 GT
• Ford Mustang Mach E GT
• BMW iX
• BMW i5

For now it is unclear which of the above vehicles passed the initial phase of tests – and which ones will make it to real-world assessments as police vehicles. 

The data will be assessed by the NSW Police Fleet and its technical team, before deciding with the NSW Police Highway Patrol which electric vehicles will make it through to the operational evaluation.

The plan is to deploy a small number of electric vehicles – to supplement the fleet of hundreds of petrol and diesel highway patrol cars, to ensure police capabilities are not affected by the trial.

The handful of electric cars to be trialled by police are estimated to account for less than 0.2 per cent of the total highway patrol fleet – and will be put on the road in addition to petrol and diesel cars already in use, to ensure there is no impact on police operational capability.

Authorities are keen to understand the suitability of electric vehicles in the future.

So far this year, almost 10 per cent of all new cars sold in Australia are electric vehicles, according to official sales data provided by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI).

While there will always be exemptions for the types of vehicles required by emergency services – to ensure public safety – electric cars are being tested to see if they could play a role in policing.

As part of the study, the trial electric police cars will be deployed at various locations across the state to assess their suitability in a range of scenarios.

Police are keen to get feedback from as many officers as possible to better understand the strengths – and limitations – of electric cars, in particular if they have enough driving range for police use.

Police are also keen to find out how well electric cars handle the daily grind of highway patrol work, including how much energy police lights and radio equipment use when the vehicle is stopped on the side of the road for extended periods of time, such as at major incidents, road closures or RBT sites. 

Police say there are no plans to replace any petrol or diesel highway patrol cars with electric cars – and stressed this was a trial to better understand the technology as the number of electric vehicles on Australian roads increases.

It may be the case that electric cars might be suitable for police work in city and suburban areas – and unsuitable for remote or regional areas due to limited driving range, for example.

Police say this is what the study aims to find out, in the same way police departments in New York and California are trialling electric cars in a range of real-world uses among first responders.

The current crop of electric cars under consideration by NSW Police Highway Patrol have a driving range of about 350km to 400km.

Most highway patrol cars in urban areas cover a maximum distance of 200km or less during a shift.

One myth likely to be dispelled is performance.

The electric cars selected for the initial deployment are more powerful than the high-performance Holden Commodores and Ford Falcons previously used by police when Australia still manufactured cars.

Furthermore, independent testing shows the electric cars being considered by NSW Police for Highway Patrol work have similar – or even better – acceleration than the current fleet of vehicles.

Only electric vehicles that pass the rigorous assessments at the Police Driver Training Centre in Goulburn will be eligible for consideration for the NSW Police Highway Patrol electric-car trial.

Once the data is collected, NSW Fleet Services will make recommendations to NSW Police about which electric vehicles are eligible to progress to the next phase: a real-world deployment working out of selected highway patrol offices.

NSW Police say they are keen to prepare for – and better understand – what an electric highway patrol car of the future might look like.

The highway patrol division says electric cars will only be used in situations where driving range on a single charge is not likely to be exceeded on a typical shift. 

This includes testing the vehicle during roadside breath testing, or at road closures, where the vehicles activate their flashing lights for hours on end.

A statement from NSW Police Traffic and Highway Patrol Superintendent Anthony Boyd said: “Highway patrol vehicles are developed in consultation with our internal fleet partners. 

“The fleet industry and its products for consumers is continually evolving and our (highway patrol) fleet must do the same to ensure we have the most suitable product for use … in the operational environment.

“The recent testing of electric vehicles allows us to understand the capabilities and limitations of electric vehicles in the environments they may be asked to operate in across the state.”

A statement from NSW Police Fleet said: “NSW Police Fleet Services have partnered with Traffic and Highway Patrol Command in a project that will allow NSW Police to review emerging technologies and alternate fuels to continue providing a safe NSW.

“Vehicle assessment begins with a review of published information. Next is a series of measurements to determine the ergonomic suitability of the vehicles, followed by an assessment of suitability of the vehicle for police fit-out.

“Finally we get to the track (at the Police Driver Training Centre in Goulburn) where we test the performance and handling.”

Editor’s note: Photoshop artist impressions in this story by @theottle. Images are watermarked to protect the artist’s copyright and EFTM’s editorial investment. In other words, so people don’t copy the images and pass them off as their own.