As an environmentalist, I support the City's goal to reduce greenhouse emissions through the use of fuel-efficient vehicles, including alternative fuels plus the goal of moving to all-electric vehicles whenever practicable. Furthermore, the City should consider the entire life-cycle of vehicles within its vehicle fleet strategy. A life-cycle approach means factoring the energy used to create the vehicle, the materials used in the vehicle, maintenance, consumables other than fuel, life expectancy, and responsible recycling or re-use of the vehicle as its reaches end-of-life. A vehicle fleet strategy also recognizes that not only do vehicles fall into different classes (from riding lawn mowers to large trucks, heavy equipment, various sizes of passenger cars and today's topic, police cars) with a huge range of use cases. For example, some vehicles will almost always be in motion while others may have their engines running, but slow-moving or stationary; some may largely be used on city streets, others off road in parklands; some will seldom be driven about 30 mph and others use our freeways on a daily basis. The City can best meet its green objectives by setting overall fleet standards for carbon emissions rather than a piecemeal vehicle by vehicle approach. This is especially relevant when the automotive industry is in the transition from carbon-based fuels to alternative fuels (such as hydrogen and biodiesel), hybrid, and all-electric vehicles. Given the rapid evolution of consumer-level electric vehicles, it is natural to ask which vehicles in the CIty's fleet are good candidates for all-electric? The answer at this time is consumer passenger cars. So why not police cars? To begin with, given the amount of additional equipment in a police vehicle there is a huge weight differential. Heavier cars place an increased load on electric batteries, significantly decreasing efficiency. Some of this additional equipment in a police car requires power, such as computer and communication systems, another load on batteries. Police vehicles also spend a good deal of time at the scene of an incident, no moving (so no regenerative braking) with all of their emergency lights and other electronics and AC running. In short, there's a reason no manufacturer makes all-electric police cars: it is currently not a good fit for current battery technology. This is why I support the next best alternative: hybrid gas-electric police vehicles, built on a common chassis (to allow swapping of parts and ease of maintenance, a common practice in fleet management), with consideration given to the life-cycle management, mentioned previously. In my own household, we have two vehicles one all-electric and one hybrid, so we have personal experience with both technologies and recognize the pluses and minuses of each. As I member of the Chief of Police Advisory Committee (I am not speaking for the committee but as a private citizen) I have insight into police operations that other citizens may not have. Fleet efficiency? Yes! A goal of all-electric vehicles? Yes! Are we there yet? Nope. But we will get there and meanwhile, we need to match today's technology with what's best for the use. Regards, *Steve Taffee* *600 Willow Rd, Unit 10, Menlo Park, CA 94025* *415-613-6684* Received on Tue Jun 11 2019 - 10:19:46 PDT
