Unless most people suddenly switched to EVs all at once (0% chance of that), I’m not worried about there not being enough electricity. Most people are incentivized to charge after hours (non-peak) at home, when demand on the infrastructure is lower. In many cases, literally incentivized in that rates are not only lower but power companies often have EV rate rebates for after hours charging – I get about 45% of my cost of electrical back in bill rebates each month.
PHEV (hybrids) can be a great option. If I only could have one car, I’d seriously consider one. Since I have multiple cars, I prefer maximizing my utility by using the EV as our primary car for the vast majority of local and near trip driving and still using the ICE we already owned for longer road trips or when both cars are in use at the same time. With a PHEV, you have an incredibly complex car with more parts that can go wrong or require maintenance than either a traditional ICE or a full EV. So while the utility is good in terms of being able to use electric but fall back on gas, it doesn’t have any of the lower maintenance benefits that a full EV does.
Most EV charging is done at off peak hours, so the issue is not overall electric capacity.
However, there could be local issues with neighborhoods where the distribution lines are not enough if many of the houses with 100A electric service upgrade to 200A etc.
When will the NYPD electrify their 9,600+ vehicles? The ICE versions essentially run 24/7/365. I wonder what the emissions from the NYPD vehicles equate to in civilian vehicles? Is it 100k vehicles, or 200k, or even more?
I don’t know (will post something if/when I see it) but I do know that NYC bought many Priuses when they were first introduced. It’s still common to see hybrid cars with NYC plates. My contact with NYPD is very limited!
For NYPD vehicles, the low speed stop and go city driving and idling that predominates is the worst case for fuel consumption and emissions for an ICEV, but a case where an EV with regenerative braking can use its advantages (and range is less of an issue within the city). So swapping to EV police vehicles could be a substantial benefit for both fueling (versus electric) costs and emissions.
The main issue would be if duty cycles did not allow enough recharging time, or the garages did not have enough electric capacity to support the number of EVs recharging.
Because we have range anxiety, the PHEV hybrid was a good option for us and we love our prius prime. We don’t mind having to get oil changes every 6 months — that’s the major maintenance we ever do on it. We mostly drive short distances so it is mostly using electrical current and we charge it when we aren’t driving it. If we move out of our single family home which has photovoltaic, a non-plug in hybrid may make more sense.
After a little digging, it looks like NYPD vehicles do about 40,000 miles per year, or about 110 miles per day. Even with increased electrical loads, it looks like EV range is not an issue. A day of mileage would likely require about 4-6 hours of 240V 32A AC charging, or about 15-25 minutes of DC fast charging.
Depending on the EV, a level 3 charger can add 200 miles in < 30 mins per vehicle. The entire fleet could be charged daily with less than 10% of your estimate.
No way to know. (Unless one bothered to look it up.)
Heat and AC are likely the biggest additional drains while an EV police car is in use. Lights, computer, radio add some, but probably less than heat and AC. The light bar adds some aerodynamic drag, but not much for low speed city driving (highway patrol vehicles will see more of an impact here).
Most of the NYPD officers work 10 hour shifts, which means large numbers of those 9600 vehicles get handed off to the next shift at the same time. There isn’t a lot of down time for police vehicles. I have to believe they would need a greater than normal availability of chargers to keep the EVs continually moving. I don’t think they want the optics of cruisers and officers sitting around waiting for an available charger.
New Yorkers (well, most of us, including, I am sure, most NYPD employees) are extremely aware of the hazards of climate change and the need to do what we can to lessen fossil fuel emissions. As it is, there are plenty of NYPD officers on bikes and other smaller-than-car vehicles. Although the bureaucracy can make change complicated, I’m sure it will happen sooner rather than later. My city council member will be term-limited out of office next year and will run for NYC Controller. He is definitely climate-aware and a good worker for his constituents and city at large as the chair of the City Council Finance Committee. So maybe next year!
Obviously, efficient scheduling would be needed, but that’s far from an insurmountable hurdle.
It seems some are intent on always trying to find a potential hurdles of EV adoption, and then exaggerating them. At least that’s how I view the claim that the NYPD would need 3000 L3 chargers to keep a fleet of 9600 EV operational.
Bicycles, horses, motorcycles, and patrolling on foot can make parts of NYC more accessible to an officer, so it is no surprise that there are NYPD officers patrolling with these methods.
Hawaii even uses some Segways to help patrol. There are a lot of options and I hope broader adoption of at least hybrid if not electric is on the horizon everywhere.
They stopped making segways several years ago. Haven’t seen LE using them in a while (only tourists)! But now sure what any of this has to do with buying an EV.