Urban Ecoist

Who drives around the city all day and all night, slowly, sometimes just idling in a park or parking lot, looking for trouble? It’s the cops, man.

Well, in NYC, those cops will be driving and idling hybrids now and hopefully more so in the future.

It’s always good to see city governments take the lead in cutting carbon emissions of their vehicle fleets, as it is such organizations that have hundreds of vehicles in use. Besides being better for the planet, it doesn’t hurt that hybrids get nearly double the mileage than traditional cars. Which leads to considerable savings in fuel costs for those cities.

The details…New York City will soon have 40 2009 Nissan Altima hybrids on the streets of the Big “Green” Apple. 18 of which will be used on regular patrol, 20 will be undercover, and two will be made to look like yellow taxis. Cute. Anyway, it’s the 18 on patrol that will be the most scrutinized, as it is unsure whether a hybrid vehicle can withstand the long days of constant patrol enough to be feasible as replacements fleetwide.

After hybrids cops, hybrid cop cars were just a matter of time...

By the way, the 2009 Nissan Altima hybrid is only available in such progressively green states as New York, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Oregon, Rhode Island, Maine, and New Jersey. It’s funny that back in the 50’s being “red” was being a communist and today a “red” state is just the opposite (though still a little fascist perhaps). Ah, you have to love the irony of history.

And get this, the Altima hybrid gets better fuel economy in the city as opposed to highway-driving. How ’bout that? The numbers are 35 mpg city and 33 mpg highway. The regular old cop cars get half that; the V-8 version of the Chevy Impala gets 16 mpg city, and the Ford Crown Victoria gets .

Although, it should be noted that Ford is not taking this threat of the hybrid cop car lying down. Ford’s website for the specialty Police Interceptor version of the Crown Victoria announces that the Police Interceptor is now offering E85 capacity. The pdf claims that the “flexible fuel” option supports “America’s farming economy.” Yeah. That’s what it does.

NYC, New York City, Nissan, Altima, hybrid, green cars, fuel economy, mpg, fuel costs, fleet, Chevy, Impala, Ford, Crown Victoria, Police Interceptor, flexible fuel, ethanol, E85, carbon emissions