Dodge announced for its Charger Pursuit cars Friday an available 12.1-inch Uconnect touchscreen, which is five times larger than its 5-inch model available in some of its cars.
The 12.1-inch screen — which is only available on Charger cars for police for now — is meant to eliminate mounted laptops in the front seats of many police vehicles. The screen can be connected to a laptop in the trunk via ethernet cord, and can display functions such as lights, sirens, forward-mounted cameras and radio information.
In addition to the massive Uconnect screen, Dodge sells the Charger with a V-8 and all-wheel drive only to police fleets, complete with steering column-mounted shifter.
Police fleet sales comprise a substantial part of overall sales of large sedans. Automakers don’t disclose overall costs of their police cars, however the California Highway Patrol recently paid $30,000 per Ford Taurus-based Interceptor it recently purchased, according to the LA Times.
In 2014, Dodge sold more than 10,000 of its Charger Pursuit cars according to the report.
I’m curious as to whether California’s $30K-per-unit cost was for Taurus PIs with the 3.5-liter EcoBoost. In our city’s fleet, the Taurus PI is rapidly becoming the replacement for the Crown Victoria, and every officer I’ve talked to has said his/her interceptor is equipped with the regular 3.7-liter.
30K per unit was the Explorer with the 3.7L. CHP did not like the sedan.
Without knowing what other options were purchased with the vehicles, it’s very difficult to know if $30K is reasonable or not.
Btw: The 3.7L is pretty nice. For most purposes, including law enforcement, it’s plenty of motor.
$30k is just the start….granted because they buy so many they get a pretty good discount. I’ve seen units coming down the line with $40K and up stickers on them.
$30k per unit is about right (for a buyer of that size) for a Taurus (sorry, “Interceptor Sedan”) with all the usual upfit equipment, probably without a cage, and ready to go into service.
available 12.1-inch Uconnect touchscreen, which is five times larger than its 5-inch model available in some of its cars.
5 x 5 = 12!
Fkin Common Core….
Um… a 5″ screen has an area of 79cm^2 and an 11.6″ screen has an area of 423cm^2 so 5 times larger – more of less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_size
I figured it was something with surface area. I forgot all that long ago.
THANK YOU for explaining the math to the math challenged.
But it’s portrait mode, how you gonna watch p̶o̶r̶n̶t̶u̶b̶e̶ Netflix on that?
CoreyDL – FCA is using all of their good PR people on recalls.
The good news is they didn’t have to harden or plasticize the interior at all to get it ready for PD duty.
Those cheap-looking interiors are good for something!
Are you suggesting they should have done a PT Cruiser PD and a Caliber PD? Cause I’d be into both of those.
At least with a conventional laptop stand you had a solid, stable keyboard permitting normal two-handed input. That wireless one will be miserable to try to use as it wobbles on an actual cop lap.
The first thing agencies would do is find a way to solidly mount that keyboard.
Any bets as to how long until we get a cell phone video of a cop watching porn on one of these?
How about some Crossy Road? Or Age of Empires, or whatever that game Kate Upon is hawking… once she appears I lose focus on everything else on the screen!
I know that commercial, its for….. umm… Kate Upton? Steel lingerie? No idea.
I’m pretty sure it’s for breast implants.
Or app that shows the closest Dunkin’ Donuts?
They don’t need an app for that – their patrol routes go by every donut shop in their patrol area. It’s like what Catholics call “stations of the cross”.
I’m bettin’ on the first YouTube videos will be cops watching episodes of T.J. Hooker.
Network interface? Why?
Why is this anything more than an HDMI or DVI interface display given the recent demonstrations of how poorly secured automotive systems in FCA vehicles are?
Integrating the police computer into the car seems like a perfect way to welcome hackers to a new challenge of gaining access to the police computer system through the CAN bus.
No more of a risk than it is for the current laptop-to-WiFi/VPN-to-Dispatch hookup. Since, essentially, that’s all this is. The laptop hooks up to the screen with a hard-wired Ethernet cable.
can it be hacked? Video game hacking dreams can come true now.
I hear General Motors is building a Cadillac with a curved 70″ screen that will sit on the top of the dashboard. Forward visibility will be a major problem but occupants will be highly entertained.
Maybe the screen will *be* the forward visibility. It’s how they’re already handling rear visibility in these fat-pillared, slit-windowed CAFE caves.
I don’t think CAFE has anything to do with the large A-pillars. I thought that was all the rollover standards/coveted 5-star safety rating.
Two TTAC’ers walk into a bar. One says to the other: “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“CAFE”
Two TTAC’ers walk into a bar…… the third one ducks!
The chicken couldn’t afford to cross the road because of the evil chicken tax!!!
And the road isn’t paved because of Obama CAFE subcompact socialism hybrid 4-cylinder-turbo murder 91-octane UAW fascism communism!!!
I only baited you guys because I knew that if Pch showed up he’d bring all the media with him.
I can’t wait to see the Clarion deca-din motorized headunit that gets slapped in there after Car 54 gets retired.
That’s the next step: officers wearing smart helmets like jet pilots use. They’ll wear them inside and outside the car, and we’ll see nothing but a silver reflective face shield while they employ face recognition to ID and pull up all known data on the witnesses/suspects they’re talking to. There will also be instant translation for interrogating non-English speakers.
Sad thing is that some micro-van in China from a never-heard-of-before manufacturer, is being equipped with a 16″ screen, and is currently already on the market:
http://www.carnewschina.com/2015/09/09/weichai-auto-yingzhi-737-mini-mpv-hits-the-chinese-car-market/
1024×768 on a 12 inch tablet is fail written all over it. I mean, come one, seriously? You can buy a chinese 1980×1200 13.3 inch tablet for around 150 bucks.
Is the one-piece dash the standard now? Pop the passenger airbag and it’s more likely “totaled”. But one airbag “recall” and FCA is totaled.
Larger font size on a “low res” screen – easier to see/touch for the intended use.
It doesn’t matter for police use. They need to be rugged. Government use electronics tend to 2-3 years behind consumer spec stuff. You can look up emergency vehicle touch screens online most have IP and vibration ratings much higher then the consumer stuff.
The fact that they chose a 12 inch screen with 1024×768 resolution means that they found a supplier with thousands of these crap displays sitting in a warehouse and got them for a steal.
FCA is trying, but they can’t address the Charger’s deficiencies of inability to open the front doors 90 degrees for quick exit, the lack of hip space for officers wearing loaded utility belts, and the lack of space in the back seat with the cage installed, making it difficult to put arrestees in or take them out.
Well, they can, but they’d have to redesign the car with a longer wheelbase, wider track, and taller roof, until they end up with a Chrysler 300 with a high greenhouse. The police also liked the menacing old front clip that the Italian designers softened. They might have been better off using the Durango as the base car.
I see more new generation explorers than anything else. I think that the space of the explorer is winning out over the performance of the charger, which makes sense, space for perps and all the required gear is probably more important than performance for a modern police vehicle.
On the Charger, the “Hemi” and “SRT” badges were expected to reduce chases, even though there would be a Pentastar V6 under the hood. But the old standby is reasserting its power: nobody outruns the radio. Nobody outruns the military surplus Blackhawk helicopters either.