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Welcome to the United States, where the 301-hp V-6 Toyota Camry thrives and a 470-hp Jeep Wrangler on 35-inch mud-terrain tires reaches 60 mph quicker than a Ford Mustang Mach 1. It’s all screaming bald eagles until one ends up stolen, racing, and weaving between traffic like a drunken three-ton bowling ball. Sure, helicopters are fast, but somebody’s got to meet ol’ Breaky McLawLaw when their crime spree comes to a crashing halt. So what’s the best car for the job? Although the law enforcement profession is far more dynamic than just high-speed emergency responses, many departments require their vehicles to meet what’s called a “purchasing spec.” Vehicles must meet certain requirements to be eligible for patrol but still have enough performance to be effective when responding to more dangerous situations.

The Michigan State Police (MSP) have published their preliminary results from their police vehicle testing at Grattan Raceway in southwestern Michigan. MSP troopers put four motorcycles and 11 vehicles through a series of track tests including acceleration, top speed, distance to top speed, braking, and lap times to make performance comparisons to help municipal, county, and state police departments in all 50 states decide on what fits their needs the best.

Ford Police Interceptor Utility Hybrid.
Ford

The all-wheel-drive 2022 Ford Police Interceptor Utility (FPIU), with its 400-hp twin-turbo 3.0-liter V-6, remains the quickest police vehicle sold today, getting to 60 mph in 5.5 seconds and 100 mph in 13.5 seconds during MSP testing. It reached its top speed of 148 mph (also the highest of the vehicles tested) in 1.6 miles. Although that’s not as quick as the Wrangler 392, its 36-mph deficit in top speed would allow the Explorer to catch up to it. The EcoBoost FPIU was also 0.7 second quicker to 60 mph and 0.6 second quicker to 100 mph than the 380-hp Dodge Charger Pursuit rear-wheel-drive V-8 sedan. The rear-drive V-8 Charger Pursuit hit its top speed of 139 mph in under a mile, the shortest of any vehicle tested this year. Although not stated in this year’s preliminary results, last year’s Charger Pursuit also posted the best turning radius, which is often a major first part of responding to an emergency.The MSP also got their hands on a Ford Mach-E police prototype vehicle. According to the MSP, this police version has all-wheel drive and 480 horsepower, so it’s basically the Ford Mach-E GT with red and blue lights. It reached 60 mph in 4.0 seconds and hit 100 mph in 11.9 seconds. Ford says the street version should hit 60 mph in 3.5 seconds, but it’s safe to assume the police-going version’s slower acceleration is due to added equipment. It took more than two miles for it to reach its top speed of 124 mph. The more civilized 346-hp all-wheel-drive Mach-E 4 we tested did the 60-mph leap in 5.1 seconds.
The MSP told us that after 18 miles of lapping the Mach-E GT’s battery had dropped to 30 percent, which they said is a good start for electric vehicles. But today’s infrastructure still needs a boost in chargers and charging time for EVs to act as a complete replacement for patrol duty. The MSP also told us that many of their new Ford Explorer FPIUs are the 318-hp hybrid versions, which get the highest EPA-estimated city fuel economy among this year’s police vehicles tested at 24 mpg.

The Ford F-150 Police Responder pickup reached 60 mph in 5.8 seconds and 100 mph in 14.3 seconds. That’s still slower than the quickest pickups we’ve tested, including the last-gen F-150 with the high-output 450-hp twin-turbo V-6, but the trucks we test don’t have push bars on the front. Unlike the Explorer FPIU, the F-150 Responder has a 400-hp 3.5-liter twin-turbocharged V-6 with 500 pound-feet of torque. It reached its 120-mph top speed in a little over a half a mile. That’s a big improvement over the 370-hp F-150 Police Responder offered last year: that one had a lower top speed of 105 mph and took 6.6 seconds to reach 60 mph. The MSP also told us they expect more fully electric police vehicles next year, as more automakers continue to focus their efforts on a battery-powered future. A more in-depth look at the MSP’s testing data will become available later this month.
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Mitsubishi has shared official images of the 2023 Outlander plug-in hybrid.The hybrid version will join the standard model in the U.S. in the second half of 2022.We know it will offer all-wheel drive and a third row seat, but more details will be released October 28.The Mitsubishi Outlander looks quite different from the Nissan Rogue it’s based on, and the Mitsu will also differentiate itself from the Nissan by offering a plug-in-hybrid variant. Ahead of its arrival in the U.S. in the second half of next year, we can now see the 2023 Outlander PHEV inside and out thanks to these photos Mitsubishi has released ahead of the full debut October 28.The main styling cues unique to the hybrid are badges on the front fenders and a charging port on the rear fender. It’s identical inside, even including the third-row seat that was absent in the previous-generation Outlander PHEV. It’ll be available in ten colors including red, white, and black.

Mitsubishi

Full details on the Outlander’s powertrain will come in a few weeks, but we know that it will offer an all-wheel-drive system with two electric motors: one in the front and one in the rear. It should also offer more electric driving range than the outgoing model, which is EPA-rated to go 24 miles on a full charge.While it was the only plug-in-hybrid available in the U.S. for some time, the Outlander plug-in hybrid will face more competition this time around. Toyota now sells a RAV4 Prime and Ford offers a PHEV version of the Escape.
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The National Auto Dealers Association (NADA) announced today that it will work with Chargeway to teach EV sales techniques to member dealers.A pilot program in Oregon made it clear that many dealers need to get their salespeople up to speed on electric vehicles—but once they did, EV sales went up. Charging methodology is one thing dealers need to be able to explain, but there are many other features, from finding charging stations to claiming tax incentives for EV purchases.For more than a decade, franchised auto dealers have been more of an impediment than a help in selling electric cars. But that may be about to change. If all goes well, new-car shoppers may start to find dealerships are happy to help educate them about how EVs are used—and, in particular, how they’re charged, a major source of misunderstanding among not only shoppers but salespeople themselves.Today, the National Auto Dealers Association (NADA) announced it has chosen Chargeway to help its member dealerships explain EV charging, showing how shoppers can travel in electric vehicles by using charging stations along their routes. NADA and Chargeway previewed the news exclusively for Car and Driver.

Soon, shoppers may be able to enter their travel patterns into dealer websites to discover how and where to charge EVs locally and on road trips. Dealer sites will lay out all relevant financial incentives from the federal and state governments, plus local electric utilities. The goal is to educate shoppers on how EVs can fit into their lives before they ever set foot in a dealership.

Chargeway kiosk in an Oregon dealership.
Chargeway via Facebook

Chargeway first gained recognition in 2017 for its simple, intuitive, color-coded visual language for identifying and distinguishing EV charging stations. It quickly expanded into helping Oregon understand and sell EVs more effectively by placing large kiosks right in showrooms. Those let salespeople and shoppers together find charging sites locally and along routes a driver specified, showing how to route a trip among charging stations and how much (or little) time to spend there.Early on, the Oregon Auto Dealers Association recognized how challenged its members were in selling EVs effectively, giving it an incentive to work with Chargeway to pilot the system at willing dealerships. Kiosks also included information on incentives from the state of Oregon for purchasing an EV, and from relevant local electric utilities on charging rates, incentives for installing a home charging station, and other EV-related purchases.A small test of several dealers provided conclusive proof: Effectively educating shoppers about EV charging and how the cars could do longer road trips let dealers with Chargeway kiosks sell more EVs than comparable dealers without them.The final step was to integrate Chargeway’s mapping, routing, and education—already found in its phone app and the showroom kiosks—into dealers’ websites. This, according to the new partners, was what really sold NADA on Chargeway.“We looked at a number of different training tools and consumer apps,” said Mike Stanton, CEO and president of NADA. The group “found Chargeway best answered the questions our dealers were asking about EV charging: how long it takes, how home charging works, what incentives are available, and even how temperature and speed affect an EV road trip.”The turnaround is striking, as EV advocates have known for years that dealers haven’t wanted to sell EVs—though sometimes for very practical reasons. Hundreds of EV shoppers reported visiting dealers to find disinterested or uninformed salespeople, some of whom said things about EVs that weren’t true—and many of whom worked hard to steer them away from an EV into a gasoline vehicle.A November 2019 report released by the Sierra Club, Rev Up Electric Vehicles: A Nationwide Study of the EV Shopping Experience, showed the extent of the problem. Three-quarters of dealers didn’t sell EVs at all. In 28 percent of dealerships visited by “secret shoppers,” salespeople provided no information at all about how to charge an EV. Nor did they offer information on state and federal incentives for EV purchase in 31 percent of those dealers visited.Perhaps worst of all, in one out of 10 dealers that did sell EVs, the test vehicle hadn’t been recharged to give it sufficient range to provide a test drive. That won’t be an option for much longer. Every carmaker selling in the U.S. will offer at least one EV within the next few years. Larger makers from GM and Ford to Volkswagen and Hyundai-Kia have plans to offer full ranges of EVs while trimming their gasoline lineups before largely eliminating them by 2035 or after. That year, incidentally, is the same year California expects to end the sale of new gasoline-powered passenger cars and trucks.
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Acura has confirmed that the upcoming Integra will offer a six-speed manual transmission.We also know the car will be available in a four-door hatchback body style.The Integra is set to debut in 2022 and will go on sale in the U.S. that year as well.Acura is continuing to trickle out information about the return of the Integra, and the latest tidbit is sure to delight enthusiasts. Like its predecessors, the 2023 Integra will be available with a manual transmission—a six-speed, to be specific. A photo reveals the shift knob and a bit of the car’s center console, while a video clip includes an engine sound that hints at a turbo-four powertrain.
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We’re expecting the Integra to share many components with the Honda Civic, so that opens up a few possibilities for which engine will power the new entry-luxury model. The turbo 1.5-liter inline-four from the base Civic and the Si is likely, although we’re really hoping that Honda sees fit to install the more powerful turbo 2.0-liter unit from the Civic Type R into a performance-oriented Type S version of the Integra. Both of these engines are already offered with stick-shifts in Civic models, so there’s precedent for a row-your-own gearbox.Compared with the Honda, the Integra is likely to have its own unique styling—as we’ve seen from teaser photos—along with a nicer interior layout. A four-door hatchback is the only body style that’s been confirmed so far. All-wheel drive is a likely option, as many of its entry-luxury competitors offer that option, although we’re doubtful that you’ll be able to pair AWD with the manual.Stay tuned for more information to come on the Integra, as we should see the real thing sometime early in 2022 before it goes on sale later that year.
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