UK police forces have over 430 electric vehicles in their fleets

With new petrol and diesel cars banned from the end of the decade, it is expected that not only the public will switch to electric vehicles in the coming years – the police will also have to do the same.

And some have already started adding battery-powered cars to their fleets, with British forces so far operating more than 430 electric vehicles and more than 800 dedicated charging stations of their own, according to a new study.

Motorcycle title Auto-Express asked British police across the country how many EVs they currently use and found that the numbers are not evenly distributed, with some using close to 100 and others none at all.

All 45 UK police forces were contacted via a request for information, although only 34 responded.

Of those, 26 officers said they had at least one electric vehicle in their fleet, while the remaining seven said they should not use a battery model for official police purposes yet.

Of the 11 remaining armed forces, some refused to provide the information because it was “not in the public interest.”

The UK’s biggest force – unsurprisingly – has the most EVs in the fleet right now.

The Metropolitan Police Service currently has 99 all-electric vehicles, including 50 Nissan e-NV200 electric vans, 41 Nissan Leaf hatchbacks and eight BMW K17 C Evolution maxi scooters.

Police also use a large number of BMW i3 patrol cars, but these are range-extending models that have a small supplemental petrol engine, rather than the all-electric versions of the German model.

The survey also asked British troops about the number of electric vehicle charging stations they have installed to power their battery cars and motorcycles.

The Met also has the highest number of charging stations with 264 across its 33 police stations.

It told Auto Express that its 99 vehicles are usually charged with these devices, although officers “occasionally” also have to connect to public charging stations.

Another force with a large number of electric vehicles is Gloucestershire Constabulary, which has a total of 83.

Of the EVs it has, 72 are Nissan Leafs, nine Nissan e-NV200s, and also two Tesla Model 3s.

The Corps has a total of 59 chargers at 17 police stations in the county, and it also has a strict policy of using them only and never using public chargers that are in short supply for members of the public who own an EV.

Earlier this year, the Local Democracy Reporting Service filed its own FOI request with Gloucestershire Constabulary regarding the number of times its fleet of electric vehicles went out of power during a shift.

It confirmed two recorded instances of EV vehicles running out of power – one in 2019 and one last year.

Neither was during an emergency, as police say the electric vehicles are “not authorized to respond to emergencies,” according to the report. Gloucestershire Live.

The Leaf is by far the UK’s most popular electric car with 117 in use, accounting for more than a quarter (27 percent) of all ‘blues and two’ electric cars.

The BMW i3, Nissan e-NV200 and Vauxhall Corsa-e are also very popular choices, with 87, 71 and 60 of these vehicles in police fleets respectively, Auto Express found.

Police forces across the country have been offered the offer this year to try out a £60,000 Tesla Model 3 patrol car, which has been completely modified for agent use by the US automaker.

The Elon Musk brand claimed it had received “staggering” reports from officers, as well as much public support for the 162 mph electric sedan.

A summary of the first nine months of the trial published late last year said the Police Model 3 was able to drive up to four hours of uninterrupted “advanced driving conditions.” Agents using the car gained access to the company’s Supercharger network of charging devices.

Armed forces that responded to the FOI request saying they now have no EVs included Cambridgeshire, City of London, Durham, Lancashire, Northern Ireland, Staffordshire and Warwickshire.

Police Scotland is one of 11 armed forces that have not provided information on how many electric cars or chargers it currently has.

A spokesperson said this was both because it doesn’t keep all the information and said it would be “against the public interest” to tell the car title about the number of EVs it operates.

Still, it told Scotland’s Liberal Democrats in August that it has spent around £20 million buying electric cars to bolster its fleet.

However, the police also admitted to the political party that so far they had not installed the necessary infrastructure to charge them, leaving vehicles overnight in public parking lots to replenish the batteries.