New Police Car Tech {Lightning}

This year at Police Fleet Expo we got to see the latest and greatest in police car technology.

coolest p-code ever.

He mentioned standard range is in the high 200's . Is he working with a '24 lightning? Or maybe he just misspoke?

KevinC said:

He mentioned standard range is in the high 200's . Is he working with a '24 lightning? Or maybe he just misspoke?

Click to expand...

My gut instinct is that he misspoke.

So when I was talking with my town's police captain and an officer after I got my Lightning, they told me that in their regular ICE/hybrid units the computers, LEDs, and equipment they normally run of the vehicle will drain the battery in about 20 minutes. I seriously wonder how much all that electric load is going to affect the vehicle's range for patrol.

It's not necessarily a criticism, just one of those issues that you don't think about unless you're running a fleet of police vehicles.

It's Just Me said:

So when I was talking with my town's police captain and an officer after I got my Lightning, they told me that in their regular ICE/hybrid units the computers, LEDs, and equipment they normally run of the vehicle will drain the battery in about 20 minutes. I seriously wonder how much all that electric load is going to affect the vehicle's range for patrol.

It's not necessarily a criticism, just one of those issues that you don't think about unless you're running a fleet of police vehicles.

Click to expand...

The 12V battery in an ICE F150 has about 0.96 kWh capacity so about 1% of the Lightning SR battery. That’s total but it will probably drop too low to start the vehicle if you use 50% or more of the capacity. Even assuming it takes 20 minutes to use the full capacity that means that the load is around 3 kW so it will reduce the range by about 3% for every hour you’rer running all the lights and computers. I doubt it is that extreme though since I have used ProPower to run all the lights, fans, TV, and computers in my house and drew just over 1 kW.

KevinC said:

He mentioned standard range is in the high 200's . Is he working with a '24 lightning? Or maybe he just misspoke?

Click to expand...

I average 2.8 in good weather, if it's only driving city streets then I could see a SR going high 200's.

As a Ford Rep(I think he is) he should really only be quoting certified ranges, not extremely optimal hard to reach ranges. He probably misspoke.

I am hopeful that if it is a 2024 lfp then maybe they just filled the entire battery cavity with lfp battery and the range is going to be higher.

When ford switches to lfp they cant afford for the range to go down even if it is just the SR. Right now Ford is the range laggard and they can't go backwards. Regardless of the philosophical arguments on range vs too much battery weight, Ford just can't go backwards in range when it goes to lfp. It's quite likely if they filled a larger portion of the battery cavity with lfp the range would be higher than the existing SR just to err on the side of caution.

News reporting says battery pack prices have continued to plummet in the last 6 months from 20-40% depending on where you read it. If they can get a 260 mile range lfp in there for SR im in. 260 miles of fully usable range would be a steal if truck prices dont increase. LFP should lower the price of the truck.

carys98 said:

The 12V battery in an ICE F150 has about 0.96 kWh capacity so about 1% of the Lightning SR battery. That’s total but it will probably drop too low to start the vehicle if you use 50% or more of the capacity. Even assuming it takes 20 minutes to use the full capacity that means that the load is around 3 kW so it will reduce the range by about 3% for every hour you’rer running all the lights and computers. I doubt it is that extreme though since I have used ProPower to run all the lights, fans, TV, and computers in my house and drew just over 1 kW.

Click to expand...

Like I said, it would be interesting. Thankfully most lights are all LEDs and they draw very little. But those computers.

I think the Captain said there is a department out in Indiana (was definitely in the mid-west) that a lot of departments are watching since they are doing a lot of EV testing with police equipment and packages.

I live in a pretty rural town, and we have two traffic lights, not a whole lot of stop and go to get the regenerative braking going too well - our only traffic jams are during school drop offs and pick ups.

In a city though, this could make a huge difference.

One thing I have wondered is if it is going to take 8 hours to charge up, these departments are going to have budget for more vehicles because the previous shift's units are going to have change up - unless Tesla gets in on it and charges the truck up in 30 minutes.

And there is no way these vehicles are going to last for a Massachusetts State Trooper driving 85 and doing all highway.

Going to be interesting for the PoPo in the next few years.