There's A Guy...
...Stop me if you've heard this one.

There's a guy, in Sheboygan Wisconsin, Who's not driving for thirty-one days. Technically, it's a protest to gas prices, but he illustrates a good point. You can get around, even in more spread-out areas, without a car. He's also going to figure out how much he travels by bike, calculate what he would have spent on gas, and donate that amount to charity.

There's also a point to this.

Here in Ottawa, various city groups are constantly complaining about being underfunded. The Police force comes quickly to mind. And gas is expensive, and lets face it, cops use a lot of gas. So.... why aren't police forces using hybrid full-size sedans?

Oh, because No one makes any.

Why the hell do Chevrolet, Ford, and Chrysler, the primary suppliers of fleet vehicles, not have hybrid variants yet? THey've got hybrid PICK UP TRUCKS for fuck's sake!?!

I say this, because I walked down to get lunch, from work, and there were two cops parked side-by-each in the parking lot, talking. I've no problem with that. But both cars are running. When I walked back, they're still there, both still idling. At least twenty minutes. That's a lot of gas. You figure there's, oh, say, fifty to a hundred cop cars on the road, in Ottawa, every day, twenty four hours a day. Those cars almost never get turned off. And they get about 15mpg in city driving. I know, I used to own one. And the thing is, most of that time is either idling, or cruising in city traffic.

And that's where the hybrids excel.

Right now, hybrids are designed so that if you're not right into the gas, the electic motors run off battery, and the gas engine doesn't come on. At the same time, they turn off the gas engine at stops, etc. Now, I realize there's an added electrical load with cop cars, with all the computers and equipment, but still. You could re-work the computers so that when a car sits idle for "x" amount of time, the gas engine shuts down, but everything else stays on, on that giant battery that pumps enough juice to move a vehicle for 65km by itself. Plenty to run computers and radios. And you further set the computers to turn the engine on to idle when the charge gets down to 5% or so. Will be as efficient as a private hybrid like the Prius? No, it won't. At least, not on a minute-to-minute basis. But, like I said, those cars, those big V8's, idle nearly twenty-four hours a day. If you can cut that, via a battery/electric motor set-up, to say, twelve hours a day, and use a V6 instead of an eight (or, hell, a DIESEL straight six with electric assist)[1]. Beyond the footnoted economy and emissions improvements, here's the other reason that makes sense for Cops.

Torque.

For those who aren't car people, Horsepower is the number everyone knows. But, the reality is, Horsepower equals top-speed, and is achieved high in the rev-range. Admittedly, V8's make power at much lower revs than smaller engines. But, most people never use horsepower. What you use, for acceleration, is torque. Torque, if the engine is built for it, happens down low in the rev range: in Diesels, down in the fifteen hundred RPM area. There's a reason big rigs are designed, with turbo-on-turbo-on-supercharger, to make prodigious torque and much lower horsepower (for example, maybe three hundred horsepower, but maybe eleven hundred foot-pounds of torque) It's because that is what will get a big load moving, and get it up to speed.

Why is this important for a lot of fleet vehicles, like cop cars?

Because chases aren't performed or won at high speed. They're won in the twenty to eighty km/h sprint. So, if you were to take the 4.6L V8 out of the current Ford Crown Victoria (somewhere around 265hp, and 290lb.ft of torque), and put in, say, a straight-six-cylinder Powerstroke Turbo Diesel, say, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 180hp, and 450lb.ft of torque, and THEN add a pair of electric motors at, say, 100lb.ft of torque each, suddenly, you've got a car that accelerates like a motherfucker. And that wins car chases.

It should be noted that I'm pulling numbers out of my ass, there. However, I think the logic behind it is valid, and well-informed.

See, like I said, it's all in how you drive a hybrid. If you're just tooling along in traffic, you get electric only. Say you're on the highway, where it doesn't make a lot of sense to run just electric, you get a mild combination of both engine and electric. Both of those increase fuel economy drastically, and reduce emissions even more. And then, when there's a chase, or emergency the cop puts his foot down. As he does, the electric motors are already working, and at maximum capacity, because they're an on/off proposition. if you want it, there's 200lb.ft of torque there from 0 RPM. But, their foot is to the floor, so while the electrics are already getting you moving, the Diesel is starting up, and adding it's own prodigious torque to the heap. Suddenly, you've got the same car with, hypothetically 650lb.ft of torque. And down REALLY REALLY LOW. Like, in-traffic low. So, even if the cop has to brake, (s)he still has all that torque on tap, much less likely that there's going to be waiting time while the cruiser comes back up to speed/revs. Because it's there.

I don't know what the logistics would be: Jay would know better than me. But what little I do know says that this makes sense. You combine a far more efficient, cleaner engine, with the ability to not run all the time, and suddenly you're saving a lot of fuel. Taxis would see the same benefit.

Yes, the initial outlay, IF the manufacturers decided to even sell them (and they should, as they're still determined that North American's only want big cars, but they know that fuel costs are killing sales) would be higher than a standard PI[2]. And it's pretty well known that the initial outlay, currently, doesn't really pay off, on Hybrids: It takes about four years of more-than-average driving to pay off the difference in the purchase price of a hybrid system in fuel savings. But that's in civillian use. In either police, or taxi, fleet use, that would come a lot quicker, maybe within a year. Especially as building in that kind of volume would reduce the price of the parts, and push the limits of the technology forward too.

I mean, think how long taxi's idle for at, say, Rideau Centre? Think how that would save the cabbies in the pocket book, the gas tank, and the emissions output.

As Jay will happily tell you, there's a wear issue with stopping/starting a car often, and that's not become a problem with hybrid's yet, but may do. But, at the same time, if you were to use a diesel, they're much, much tougher, and designed to run much longer with less wear. It may offset that issue at least partially.

I don't expect anyone in power to pay real attention to this, but, it's out there now. It seems smart to me.



[1] North America is woefully behind on Diesel. Yes, right now, it's about fourteen cents a litre more expensive. But, with well tuned, modern FSI Turbo Diesel engine, you can get pretty much double the mileage of the equivelant gasoline engine. And, new Diesel engines are actually cleaner than gasoline too.
[2] PI = Police Interceptor