E7 Sqaud Car--- Thoughts, Comments?

[sschlangen]

So whats everyone think of this? I found it on ILEA's website.


On Monday, October 20th, Carbon Motors Corporation held a press event at the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy to unveil the E7, the world's first purpose-built law enforcement patrol vehicle. Stacy Dean Stephens, Co-Founder and Sales Development Manager of Carbon Motors Corporation was joined by members of law enforcement from across the state of Indiana to make this announcement.

The E7, as it is code-named, is a product of Carbon Motors Corporation, a new homeland security company with a focused and singular mission: to develop, produce, distribute and service a truly purpose-built vehicle that meets the challenging needs of today’s law enforcement officer. This revolutionary new vehicle will serve as an integrated homeland security platform to provide enhanced security capabilities to the nation’s 800,000 law enforcement first responders — with substantially lower operating costs and less of a burden on taxpayers.





Here is a slide show of way more pictures

[CruiserClass]

Looks like they've been going state to state with their "unveiling" for most of the year.

Anything with a diesel and suicide doors has me sold.

[towncop]

Don't like it. Too "Robocop" looking for me. I'll take my Crown Vic any day of the week and twice on Sunday over any damn police car out there.

[Sharp]

Im glad to see theyve got a real one going around now!
Its a great idea, as long as theyve got the base to handle the maintenance/parts. I like the diesel idea as well. It looks like its pretty well thought out. Everything seems to serve a purpose, and theyve made as much room as possible in the interior. Anyone else notice the dummy shotgun/assault rifles between the driver and passenger?

[tomek]

everything has a purpose on it? then why are there LED lights on the front of the left and right rear view mirriors? so that when i open my door the driver of the vehicle i pull over will see them move and know i am opening my door?

just a thought, some of the newer unmarked vics have this, i dont like it.

[Christyle]

It's decent. I only see a few things wrong with it though.

[sschlangen]

I personally think every department should stick with the dodge chargers.

[Marine2Cop]

I went and looked at it. Pretty impressive. The representative stated they want to make the basic package(lights,siren,push bar, etc...) cost comparable to a fully loaded crown vic, if not a few thousand more. It had washout interior with drain plugs in the back seat. Spot light is built in the side mirror and moves using a joystick, although it moves real slow and needs faster motors. Seats are molded to fit an officer with gear on...imagine that. The MDT is built in the counsel and the keyboard is a touch LCD screen that is level with the center counsel, so no rotating monitor or keyboard to face you. It requires you to bend your torso down and twist over slightly to type,requiring you to peak over your dashboard to see what's in front of you. Right now, my MDT is higher up and I can type while not having to look down so much. I prefer to keep my eyes on the road and suspects...not a desktop.

Where I see a problem for them. I asked him where do we get parts and who's going to service them since it is entirely custom. What I recalled, Rep stated the department will have to send some one to get trained and all parts will be shipped. Sounds expensive and how do you troubleshoot problems the new mechanic will not know how to solve. What they could do is offer a repair service hub within the state for small departments to send their vehicle for maintenance, instead of a 10 officer department hiring their own mechanic.

Good news. Great for recruiting, diesel engine will go forever compared to gassers, and it's built for COPS. I don't foresee it being as cheap as they want to be, simply because of supply and demand. Rep stated they have several departments on a list already for purchase orders...as long as the price is realistic (...cheap is realistic to most departments). I believe it's matter of time before we take in a product such as this. The direction and resourcefulness society is going we need to be better equipped for a more dynamic challenge. The days of switch blades are over with and Glock has become a common name in many delinquent households.

Stay Safe

[OffDuty]

If firemen and EMS get their own custom builts, why not us?

Love seeing the interior closeups. I saw the video unveiling on jalopnik.com a couple weeks ago. The challenge is beating fleet price bids because if it costs three cents more than a CVPI or Impala bid, that's a no-go.

The integrated LED- no light bar=fuel savings and stealth look.
Built in partition- would like to see a single seat option
Suicide doors- much easier to control a prisoner and get the door open- big plus
Like the integrated arrowsitck too.
Seats - not too visible here- but are actually cut out to allow empty room for gunbelt crap too.

[Stig]

If you look at who helped design the internals/"guts" of the car - TOMAR made the lights, the seats were designed from a Jet manufacturer... The whole car is more involved and built for purpose than any American street car/turned police car out there. I have yet to drive one, but if you look at the specs, and that fact that it has FLIR - it's very promising.

[GGreen8]

Looks kind of girlish...like a dodge neon on riods. They need to man it up a little.

[Munky]

Not a big fan of the look of it. And if emergency lights go out on it who'd work on it? That's one reason why IMPD and other departments just buy the cars and then have their own personel install emergency equipment then they have the people who know how it's wired and can fix it. But with this car? Don't see that happening.

[Christyle]

Looks kind of girlish...like a dodge neon on riods. They need to man it up a little.

Oink

[Dwntwn317]

I think some of the ideas are good, but to me it sounds like someone trying to latch onto some big money by offering something that can only be marketed to a select portion of the population. There are 663K or so police officers in the united states. Not all of them get take-home cars, plus I decent % are admin who wouldn't need that kind of car. So say they only need to make 400K of them. I don't know much about auto manufacturing, but is that enough demand (remember, this would be a one time run, selling no cars till these initial units needed to be replaced) to make a business profitable? I think the engine service and stuff really won't be that hard. There should be a some local diesel mechanic that could be able to work on the engine. Replacing lights should be something a person who does that now should be able to handle.

I think when things like this come around, people get excited because US law enforcement seems limited to the kind of police cars we are allowed to get. Image being able to have a Honda/Subaru/Toyota police package on some of their models.

I recall watching the Georgia State Patrol BMWs escort the Olympic torch through my hometown:


How about this:


Or this:


What I like the most is the lack of the light bar. It would be cool to have interior and frame recessed lights.

[LtSPS]

The red one is a Commodore for the Queensland Police "Highway Patrol",
the white one is a Subaru WRX from New South Wales.