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NYPD To Replace Motor Fleet With Electric Scooters
XueCast writes "A few days ago, the New York Police Department, one of the largest police forces in the US, announced that they are planning to make New York greener by replacing their gasoline motorcycle fleet with the super-quiet and energy efficient electric scooters from Vectrix.
NYPD said that they will first road test four electric scooters from the Rhode Island-based electric vehicle manufacturer next month, and if the road test is a success, NYPD said that they plan to order more electric scooters from Vectrix to replace their less-than-green motorcycle fleet."
Stop linking to blogs whose sole purpose is copy+pasting content from other sites and link to the source
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
If I were a motorcycle cop, I would not want to be involved in any high-speed chases. You want to be safe within a cage for that type of work.
On the other hand, it seems silly to replace motorcycles (already quite fuel-efficient due to their light weight) while leaving gas-guzzling cars and SUVs in the fleet. Why not replace all patrol cars with hybrids? They can run on battery around town, and switch over to ICE for the high-speed chases (obviously you'd want something beefier than a Prius).
What do motorcycle cops do that those in cars can't? Is it simply their ability to go down narrower spaces, or are the motorcycles useful for more than that? Is it simply space saving over cars?
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Yep, you would think ...
... instead, as the PP notes, they use (doh) the modern comm equipment that the nice taxpayers bought for them ...
In my home town, it took a fatal collision between two police cars, both involved in the same chase, for the locals to decide that high-speed chases were now officially *not* department policy
And electric vehicles are wonderfully silent. I'm not sure how often stealth would be helpful for a NY City cop but it's certainly likely to be an interesting side effect.
People are losing what little respect they once had for each other and for themselves, such respect being the foundation of law and order and societal stability; and they are now more and more turning to (and bowing to) the use of force instead, where in more civilized times their respect for each other or for themselves would have prevented them from turning to (or bowing to) such shows of force.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
With 11000$ apiece for a Vectrix the city accountant will not be silent I guess.
"you're joking, right?"
Err no , why would I be?
"how about comparing it with a car of similar performance?"
An average bike does 0-60 in about 5 seconds. My camaro could do that and still hit 30mpg on a good day and it weighed 1600kg. How can a 160kg bike of the same performance only get less than twice the mpg? Sorry , something doesn't add up.
A vehicle such as a bike that is that light with a cross sectional area that small should have far far better mpg than perhaps 50% more than a car weighing 10 times more and 4 or 5 times the frontal area (and hence air resistance). The fact that bikes don't says a lot about their inefficient (and torque-free) engines.
For internal combustion engines, efficiency scales with size. Bigger engines therefore tend to be more efficient than smaller engines of similar design. Then, of course, you run into the maximum theoretical efficiency of a gasoline engine which is quite low to begin with: About 30% or so if memory serves.
=Smidge=
The electric scooters are replacing non-electric scooters. They are not replacing non-electric motorcycles.
There are police on foot, police on segways, police on bicycles, police on horseback, police on motor-cycles, police in patrol cars, police in interceptor cars, police in trucks, and, yes, police on scooters.
What I think is stupid, is being assumptive of the role involved and the needs without doing so much as actually even reading the article first.
Personlly, in my experience with law-enforcement, there is too often the purchase of too much vehicle... usually with the "that's what we normally get". There's really no need for a V8 in a Manhattan patrol car (or taxi, which are also generally Crown Vics with V8s that spend most of their time at a near-stand-still), no one goes that fast there. If you are highway patrol out here in FL, then you do need a large engine because 120mpg chases can happen.
Average bike does 0 - 60 somewhere closer to 4 seconds. Your average sportbike does it in 3.2 seconds, with some (traction limited) getting closer to 2.9 seconds. Most motorcycle magazines stopped using the 0 - 60 because the difference between motorcycles were so small in that range.
The 1/4 mile is the current measurement for acceleration. Even a rather large Harley will do the 1/4 in 13 - 14 seconds. Most sport-tourers do it in 12 seconds, and your average sportbike will be anywhere from low 10s to 11s.
So a stock POS (6 cyl or 8 cyl) camaro is no freakin' comparison to a bike acceleration wise, and it won't get 30 mpg on a good day either unless it is downhill and downwind all the way to your destination. Try an *average* of city/highway and I remember the cars getting more like 22/26. The day a camaro can accelerate faster than just about any motorcycle in production (except a few of the smaller displacement ones) is the day that owner decided to dump a bunch of money into the engine.
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Disclaimer: IAAEVE (I am an eletric vehicle engineer). It sounds like you've never even driven an EV.
You've exposed the most fraudulent part of the greenies' movement. Recharging batteries requires electricity, which in the US, is derived primarily from burning coal, which is worse ecologically than burning gasoline.
Burning coal to power EVs is a pretty stupid solution, and I don't think anyone is actually advocating that, but it is absolutely an improvement over burning gasoline. Your assertion is well documented as totally false, yet it's constantly repeated. You really should do your own research on this, but here's a whitepaper from Tesla Motors for starters. It's a pretty fair analysis of the relative efficiencies of various propulsion systems. It does cheat a little by assuming natural gas generation for electricity, but it's obvious from the numbers that--even from coal--EVs are a significant win in terms of reducing pollution and CO2 emissions.
You can substitute just about any EV for Tesla's Roadster -- they're all exceptionally efficient, at under 300 AC watthours per mile. Yes, I'm an electric vehicle engineer.
As long as the Greenies keep pushing fake green agendas on us like electric cars but at the SAME TIME keep protesting nuclear power, this will never be a good solution.
Nuclear power is a fantastic option. Between nuclear, wind, and hydro, more than half of California's energy is pollution- and CO2-free. Electricity is the ultimate flex fuel -- you can generate it from coal, nuclear, or solar panels on your roof.
You spewed some further misinformation further down -- I'll reply to that later on.