HPD Considers Hybrid Vehicles

HONOLULU -- High gas prices are costing the Honolulu Police Department a lot of money, and now the police chief wants to give hybrid vehicles a test drive.

Big 8-cylinder cruisers cost more than most hybrid sedans and burn a lot more gas, but there are some doubts about how hybrids will do as police vehicles.

The urgency is obvious, the police department will spend $5 million on gas this year. That is $1 million more than last year.

"One out of every $6 in our current expenses goes to fuel costs, so that's extravagant," HPD Chief Boisse Correa said.

The department plans to turn gold from seized jewelry and other property into green -- a seven-car test fleet of hybrids, including six sedans and one sport utility vehicle like a Ford Escape. It has two power plants, a 4-cylinder gas engine for high-speed driving, which recharges batteries for an electric motor for stop-and-go traffic.

"In a lot of ways a hybrid is an ideal police vehicle because police officers spend a lot of time stopped, and in this vehicle when you stop you stop using gas," HPD's finance chief Maj. Mark Nakagawa said.

New York tested an Escape under police conditions and it got 38 miles to the gallon. That kind of mileage could save the department and taxpayers $2 million a year.

"Conceptually it's going to be a vast improvement, but we want to see what the real world results are," said Bill Wiltshire of Honolulu Ford.

The main weakness of hybrids is less power.

"There are certain concessions that they are going to make. It may not get from zero to 60 in five seconds, but it is appropriate for our driving habits here in Hawaii," Wiltshire said.

Police also want to know if it can accommodate extra electrical needs like running laptop computers and sitting for long periods with lights flashing.

"We're looking at all those factors: how fast, what's the maintenance like. You name it we'll be looking at it," Correa said.

The chief said he is not worried about the hybrids speed because the department thinks high-speed chases are too dangerous, anyway.