NYPD TO GET FIRST CHEVY VOLT POLICE CARS

By Fred Meier, USA Today - New York City has bought 50 Chevrolet Volts that will go to the NYPD, as well as to the fire and sanitation departments.

The 50 Volts were among 70 EVs in NYC's latest round of buying under green Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a big fan of electrics. Also bought were 10 electric Ford Transit Connect vans and 10 electric Navistar eStar utility trucks. The 70 bring New York City's fleet of EVs to 430 and were paid for in part with U.S. Department of Energy and New York Power Authority grants.

"This is the latest and largest-ever addition of electric vehicles to the city's fleet, which is already the largest municipal clean-air vehicle fleet in the nation Bloomberg said in a press statement. "We will continue to lead by example."

The NYPD already has electric scooters and golf cars, so the Volt is maybe a step up from those rather than a step down from a Ford Crown Vic. The department also has hybrids, including Prius.

But don't look for the Volt to be whooshing through NYC's canyons, lights flashing and siren blaring, in pursuit of bad guys. The Volt, like the police hybrids, will be on traffic duty, dealing with gridlock and writing the city's famously expensive parking tickets. Too bad for the Chevy, since as anyone familiar with TV crime shows knows, that's the kind of duty the hero homicide detective is threatened with as punishment.

A charged-up Volt runs for about 35 miles on electric only, which should mean a lot of ticket writing in Manhattan before it needs to use the backup gas engine.

The city recently picked the Nissan NV200 to become the official NYC taxi will be testing a small number of electric versions of it to see if it is practical to convert the city cab fleet to electric.