The South Pasadena Police Department has completely replaced its gasoline-powered vehicles with EVs. The city’s fleet of 20 new Teslas will rely on a bank of 34 new EV chargers installed at South Pasadena City Hall. As part of the project, the City Hall, Police Station and Fire Station buildings will be backed up by a solar PV system with battery storage, adding power resilience in the event of an outage.
The transition is expected to save about $4,000 per year per vehicle on energy costs, and to provide additional savings on maintenance. Overall, the city expects the operational cost of EVs to be around half the per-mile cost of legacy vehicles.
Replacing gas-burning police and other public safety vehicles with EVs can deliver more emissions reductions than replacing other vehicles, a city spokesperson said. Police vehicles typically idle more than other vehicles when officers make traffic stops or respond to emergency calls.