Tesla Model 3 fleet is delivered to Thai police who turns them into patrol cars

Tesla delivered a whole fleet of Model 3 electric cars to the Thai police who turned them into police patrol cars.

We are starting to see Tesla vehicles becoming quite popular with police departments all over the world.

In Tesla’s own backyard, the Fremont Police Department converted a used Tesla Model S to a patrol vehicle.

The Luxembourg Police converted two Model S sedans to patrol cars, and the largest fleet of Tesla police patrol vehicles, 7 Model X electric SUVs, is in Switzerland.

At this point, there are about a dozen police departments going electric with Tesla vehicles and now the Model 3 is the one becoming most popular with police departments.

Earlier this year, the Bargersville, Indiana, police department started updating its fleet to Tesla Model 3 vehicles after they realized it would be much less expensive to drive electric.

The Model 3 Standard Range Plus version that they bought is a little more expensive than their usual Dodge Charger at ~$41,000, but they expect gas savings of about $6,000 per year, which means that the Model 3 will almost pay for itself over its lifetime (they expect six years as a police vehicle).

Now the Thai police also see the advantage of going electric with the Tesla Model 3.

According to documents first reported by Blink Drive, the Thai police bought a fleet of 7 Model 3 vehicles and turned them into patrol vehicles:

However, even with the lower fuel cost, the decision was most likely not financial since the fleet reportedly cost the Thai police 89 million Thai Baht ($2.96 million) or over $400,000 per vehicle.

Thailand has a notoriously high cost of purchase for cars due to local regulations.

We recently reported a study of Nissan Leaf EV prices in 49 countries showing a shocking range in cost with Thailand coming second to last with the Leaf costing $64,000 in the market.