Photo: LAPD
Close to one month ago, we were telling you about the Los Angeles Police Department and its bid to decide on which electric vehicle to convert into a squad car. At the moment, they had a Tesla Model S P85D sedan and a BMW i3 city car.
The choice should be obvious, right? I mean, you don't even need to go into technical details to realize that the Model S would make a more suitable police car than the tiny BMW. And then there's the aspect of design: a police officer getting off an i3 loses about 25 percent of his authority instantly, whereas the Model S looks very close to what you would expect from a police cruiser. Put a bullbar on the Tesla and it would actually make a decent police pursuit vehicle. Do the same with a BMW i3, and it'll probably feature on the "Shitty Car Mods" subreddit.
But the thing is you can't really get over the technical features because they're just so very different. The Model S offers more than twice the maximum range of an i3, it is more than twice as fast to 62 mph, it has four doors that open independently in any order (you need to open the front doors on the i3 to gain access to the reversed ones in the back), and tons of extra cargo space. The BMW i3, on the other hand, has only two things going for it: its diminutive size and, most importantly, its price.
The LAPD didn't say what it will be using the EVs for so we can't know if the size argument played any role, but the financial one sure did. The German EV has a starting price of $42,000, which means that for every two Model S P90Ds (the P85D was discontinued), they could get five BMWs. Five. And that's without factoring in the fleet discount BMW must have offered, especially since the i3 isn't exactly a best seller. So when an order for 100 units for your least best-selling model, you do your best to satisfy it. Even more so when this association might even raise the model's credentials among the LA dwellers.
But the thing is you can't really get over the technical features because they're just so very different. The Model S offers more than twice the maximum range of an i3, it is more than twice as fast to 62 mph, it has four doors that open independently in any order (you need to open the front doors on the i3 to gain access to the reversed ones in the back), and tons of extra cargo space. The BMW i3, on the other hand, has only two things going for it: its diminutive size and, most importantly, its price.
The LAPD didn't say what it will be using the EVs for so we can't know if the size argument played any role, but the financial one sure did. The German EV has a starting price of $42,000, which means that for every two Model S P90Ds (the P85D was discontinued), they could get five BMWs. Five. And that's without factoring in the fleet discount BMW must have offered, especially since the i3 isn't exactly a best seller. So when an order for 100 units for your least best-selling model, you do your best to satisfy it. Even more so when this association might even raise the model's credentials among the LA dwellers.
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