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Mark Stedman
motor magazine
The gardaí will soon be driving electric BMWs (well, some of them anyway)
Don’t get charged by the Garda in their new electric car.
BMW HAS SUPPLIED a new i3 electric car to An Garda Síochána as part of a bid to ascertain the suitability of electric vehicles for police use.
The Government has set energy efficiency targets to challenge the public sector to reach verifiable energy-efficiency savings of 33 per cent by 2020. The vehicle, which sports the famous Garda livery, will join the current fleet of some 2,800 vehicles.
Electric police cars are becoming more common. The LAPD and Denver police departments use BMW i3s and Teslas and the Grand-Ducale in Luxembourg already has a Tesla in its fleet kitted out and ready to go (it’s just waiting to pass some regulations before it can be used). Lincolnshire Police currently have a small number of Nissan Leaf EVs in the fleet and the London Metropolitan police are also testing out the BMW i3 Range Extender model for inclusion in its fleet.
The BMW i3 supplied to An Garda Síochána is the 94Ah model, which draws energy from a lithium-ion high-voltage battery with a capacity of 94- ampere hours (Ah) or 33 kilowatt hours (kWh). It has an all-electric range of 180km, however, an optional range extender engine can be added to the new BMW i3 models, providing an additional range of up to 150km of driving, a total of 330km.
In terms of performance, the BMW i3 is no slouch.There is 250Nm of torque available from the get-go and the 0-100 km/h time is achieved in 7.3 seconds and it has a top speed limited to 150 km/h. It also has zero tailpipe emissions and can charge in just 40 minutes when using a 50kW DC rapid charger.
Let’s hope you don’t get caught and charged (get it? get it?) in this new Garda car.
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