South Pasadena, California Completely Electrifies Its Police Fleet

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.

Enterprise Fleet Management assisted the city in acquiring 10 Tesla Model Ys for patrol vehicles and 10 Tesla Model 3s for detective and administrative duties. The cars were up-fitted for police use through Unplugged Performance's UP.FIT division.

"Switching to these vehicles offers the Police Department the opportunity to acquire a cutting-edge vehicle fleet," said South Pasadena Police Chief Brian Solinsky. "This initiative not only ensures the safest vehicles for officers and staff but also leads to substantial reductions in both fuel and maintenance costs. This transition enhances service levels for the residents of South Pasadena by minimizing maintenance downtime commonly seen with gas engines."

"We've had the pleasure of developing best-in-class next-generation police vehicles alongside the great team at South Pasadena Police Department," said Unplugged Performance CEO, Ben Shaffer. "As a result, 20 turnkey UP.FIT Tesla Model Y Pursuit and UP.FIT Tesla Model 3 Administrative vehicles have been produced to replace the full fleet of aging ICE vehicles."

Written by Charles Morris for Charged EV Fleet & Infrastructure News