There are over 430 electric vehicles in the UK police fleet

With new petrol and diesel cars due to be banned from the end of the decade, it’s not just members of the public who are expected to switch to electric cars in the coming years – the police will also have to do the same.

And some have already started adding battery-powered vehicles to their fleets, with the British forces boasting more than 430 electric vehicles and more than 800 of their own dedicated charging points to date, according to new research.

Vehicle title Auto express asked British police officers across the country how many electric cars they currently operate and found that the numbers are unevenly distributed, with some using almost 100 and others none at all.

All 45 UK police forces were contacted through a Freedom of Information request, although only 34 responded.

Of these, 26 police officers said they had at least one electric vehicle in their fleet, while the remaining seven said they would not yet use the battery model for official police purposes.

Of the 11 remaining forces, some refused to provide information because it was “not in the public interest”.

The UK’s biggest powerhouse – unsurprisingly – has the largest number of electric cars in the fleet at the moment.

The Metropolitan Police Service currently has 99 fully electric vehicles, including 50 Nissan e-NV200 electric vans, 41 Nissan Leaf hatchbacks and eight BMW K17 C Evolution maxi scooters.

The force also uses a large number of BMW i3 patrol cars, however these are range-extended models that have a small additional petrol engine, rather than the all-electric versions of the German model.

The inquiry also asked the British force about the number of electric vehicle charging points it had installed to keep its battery-powered cars and motorbikes running.

The Met also has the highest number of charging points, with 264 spread across 33 police stations.

Auto Express said its 99 vehicles are charged primarily with these devices, although officers “occasionally” also need to plug into public charging stations.

Another force with a large number of electric vehicles is Gloucestershire Police, with 83 in total.

As for electric cars, he has 72 Nissan Leafs, nine Nissan e-NV200s and two Tesla Model 3s.

The county’s 17 police stations have a total of 59 chargers, and they also have a strict policy of using only these and never using public chargers, which are in short supply for people who own electric vehicles.

Earlier this year, the Local Democracy Reporting Service made its own Freedom of Information request to Gloucestershire Police about the number of times the fleet of electric vehicles was discharged during a shift.

He confirmed two recorded cases of electric vehicle discharge – one in 2019 and the other last year.

Nor was there during an emergency, as the force says electric vehicles are “not authorized to respond to emergencies”, according to Gloucestershire live.

Gloucestershire Police currently has the second largest fleet after the Met. It has 72 Nissan Leafs (left and right) and nine Nissan e-NV200s (center)

The BMW i3 is the second most common electric car currently in police use, Auto Express has found in its investigation

The Leaf is by far the most popular electric vehicle of choice for the UK Armed Forces, with 117 in service, representing more than a quarter (27 per cent) of all electric blues and twos.

The BMW i3, Nissan e-NV200 and Vauxhall Corsa-e are also very popular choices, with 87, 71 and 60 of these vehicles in police fleets respectively, Auto Express found.

Police forces across the country have been put on trial this year A £60,000 Tesla Model 3 patrol car which was completely adapted by an American car manufacturer for officer use.

Elon Musk’s brand claimed to have received “overwhelming” reports from officers as well as strong public support for the 162mph electric sedan.

A summary of the first nine months of testing, published late last year, said the police Model 3 was capable of operating for up to four hours continuously in “complex driving conditions”. Officers using the car have been given access to the company’s Supercharger network.

This year, Tesla lent the police a modified £60,000 Model 3 electric sedan to test drive to see if they found the vehicle a useful addition as a patrol car.

Tesla claims that after the first nine months of the trial, officers waxed lyrical about the “stunning” performance of the electric car, which can reach 162 mph, as a police car

Forces that responded to a Freedom of Information request and said they currently had no electric vehicles included Cambridgeshire, City of London, Durham, Lancashire, Northern Ireland, Staffordshire and Warwickshire.

Police Scotland is one of 11 forces that have not provided information on the number of electric vehicles and chargers they currently have.

A spokesman said this was due to both the fact that it does not keep all the registered information and the fact that “it would be against the public interest” to tell the company the number of electric vehicles it uses.

However, he told the Scottish Liberal Democrats in August that he had spent around £20m on electric cars to boost his fleet.

However, the force also admitted to the political party that it has so far failed to install the necessary infrastructure to charge them, with vehicles being left overnight in public car parks to recharge their batteries.