It’s the first ever purpose built police car, and it’s coming to a station near you.
The company statement says, “This is the first, and only, vehicle purpose built for law enforcement. These cars will be built exclusively with a particular purpose in mind. The new E7 will be manufactured from the ground up with the sole goal of meeting al the needs of its users-law enforcement officers.”
Carbon Motors is well and truly under way with their E7 Police Cruiser and you’re looking at the future of policing for the hear and now.
Over 3500 police officers contributed to the design of ultra modern police car, which meant changes to the car’s interior dimensions, performance, durability and fuel efficiency were the most common requests.
Safety features, both inside and outside the car also featured heavily from the officer’s suggestions.
For example, the E7 is built on a space frame chassis and is capable of with standing a 75mph (120km/h) rear impact hit, while the front doors and dashboard, offer ballistic protection.
There’s also integrated nudge bumpers and shotgun mounts, and the bad guys will have to get used to composite non-cushioned rear seats, that can be hosed out.
Interestingly, the rear doors are hinged at the rear to facilitate ingress and egress of prisoners, who can be audio-visually monitored via the 15-inch computer screen up front. That said you wouldn’t recognise the centre console or the dash as being that from a car, as it looks more like the cockpit of a current jet fighter.
Other well-chosen features inside the E7 include a head up display, Weapons of mass-destruction threat detector, 360-degree exterior surveillance, Infrared system and an automatic license-plate recognition system.
Carbon Motors will need some serious infrastructure in place, if it to keep up with the demands of policing in the Unites States. There are over 19,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. with a total of over 425,000 vehicles, many of them driving up to 90,000 miles a year.
The California based company, ruled out a hybrid or EV powered car, due to the demands placed on a police vehicle. That’s when BMW came to the party with a clean 3.0-litre diesel. If it’s anything like the same size engine in the X5 SUV, it should be a cracker.
BMW diesels are second to none when it comes to sheer grunt and refinement in one package. This particular powerplant, borrowed from the X5 xDrive35d and 335d, produces 300 horsepower (224kW) and will accelerate from 0-62mph in around 6.5 seconds. Top speed is 155mph (250km/h).
The other advantage of a diesel police cruiser is that it’s significantly more fuel-efficient than a similarly powered petrol engine, and Carbon Motors expects to see a 40 percent improvement in fuel economy with the switch to the E7 diesel.
BMW are also supply the cooling and exhaust systems as well automatic transmission for the E7, and things are well and truly under way with a recent order placed for 240,000 engines.
It sounds like an ambitious target, but Carbon Motors are looking at annual production volumes of between 10,000 to 80,000 cars once production ramps up.
So far as we know, up to 350 law-enforcement agencies across the United States have already placed orders for over 13,000 E7’s for delivery in 2012.
As all orders will be customised, there is no need for the company to establish a dealer network.
Police cars in the US are normally retired when they have travelled between 60,000 and 100,000 miles (100,000km-160,000km) but the Carbon Motors E7 has been designed for a 275,000-mile (442,000km) service lifetime, making it a far superior choice to other standard model derived police cars.
Prices for the Carbon Motors E7 are likely to range between US$40,000 and US$60,000, although, this could rise dramatically if a high level of customisation is requested.