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Monday, October 4, 2021

Pulling the Plug on a Police Chase

     In March 2018, Freemont, California, a city of 214,000 in the Bay Area southeast of San Francisco, purchased a 2014 Tesla Model S-85 for $61,000. The electric powered patrol car replaced a 2007 Dodge Charger.

     The Tesla purchase was part of a pilot program to save the police department gas expenses, and to help facilitate Freemont's goal of cutting greenhouse emissions 25 percent by 2020.

     On Friday, September 20, 2019, Freemont officer Jesse Hartman began his two in the afternoon shift in the Tesla patrol car. At eleven o'clock that night, in the course of a vehicular police pursuit, the low battery warning indicated that the vehicle, due to its dying power source, had a range of six miles. Officer Hartman radioed the department's dispatcher that he was pulling the electric car to the side of the road. The other police vehicles participating in the chase continued the pursuit.

     Sometime later that night, officers came upon the suspect's vehicle. It had been abandoned in San Jose, California.

     The Tesla had run out of juice because the officer assigned to the vehicle on the previous shift had forgotten to plug it into the battery charger. 

1 comment:

  1. You gotta charge your electric car or put gas in your gas powered car.

    ReplyDelete