A fleet of Tesla Model X vehicles has been converted to police patrol vehicles in Switzerland and it is finally going into operation after being held up over data security concerns.
It can raise some eyebrows when a police service buys a ~$100,000 vehicle as a cruiser, but the Basel police department says that it is actually buying Model Xs to save money.
Last year, they announced that they are replacing 7 diesel cruisers with 7 Tesla Model X 100Ds.
The police said that the vehicles end up each costing about 49,000 Francs more than their usual diesel cruiser, but they expect that the Tesla vehicles will be better long-term investments due to “significantly lower costs for operation and maintenance and a higher resale value.”
In December, they started receiving the vehicles and converting them to police patrol vehicles.
Months later, the Basel police department had yet to start using the Tesla patrol vehicles over some concerns about Tesla’s data security.
They believed that Tesla could track the location of the vehicles and even record everything that was said inside the vehicles, which they saw as a problem as part of their police work.
Tesla allows owners to disable location tracking and while the company does have voice-activated features, it doesn’t record what is being said inside its vehicles.
It looks like the Basel police got over their concerns and they have now started deploying the fleet of Tesla Model X police vehicles around town (Images via Peter Tschanz):
Telebasel reported that the first police officers have been trained to use the electric vehicle and they have now 3 Model X patrol cars in operation with 4 more to go into operation by the end of the year – making it the biggest known fleet of Tesla patrol vehicles.
As we previously stated, Tesla vehicles are becoming strangely popular with police departments all over the world.
In the US, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Denver Police Department are both using Model S sedans as part of their fleets.
In Europe, Scotland Yard also says that it’s considering the vehicle and the Luxembourg Police converted two Model S sedans to patrol cars.
The Ontario Police also show a brand new Model X converted to a police vehicle and last year, we also reported on a Tesla Model S becoming a sneaky undercover police car.
Now Tesla’s own backyard of Fremont is also getting a Tesla police patrol car, which is being tested right now for deployment soon.
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