Fair cop – Superb police car unveiled

New patrol choice’s next duty is field testing, but it’ll be on the beat soon.

 POLICE have shown off their new Skoda primary response vehicle. 

The first Superb station wagon to be fitted out with Police equipment and livery was unveiled by the force’s boss, Commissioner Andrew Coster, in central Wellington today. 

Relating that, for frontline staff, vehicles were a primary place of work, he said the new car - the first European model ever chosen by Police here - was “a safer, more comfortable environment for them while being value for money.”

Police had to go to the market for a new fleet supplier after previous supplier Holden announced it was being discontinued as a General Motors brand.

The Superb, Skoda’s largest car, was selected last November following an evaluation process.

 Police chose two versions as patrol vehicles, a 162KW front-wheel drive and a 206KW all-wheel drive. The car also formats as a large sedan but Police nominated the station wagon, on grounds it provides greater flexibility for deployment and was also preferred by staff.

Seven companies responded to the fleet tender; one of Skoda’s opponents being sister brand Volkswagen, which pitched the Passat, a car on the same platform as the Skoda. VW NZ’s general manager, Greg Leet, previously ran Skoda, but had moved on before this tender was proposed.

Police said each vehicle submitted was tested against rigorous criteria by a team of staff from across policing groups and roles. Criteria included radio interference, performance and brake testing, emissions and service capability and the total cost of ownership.

The car shown off today includes several new prototype features, including internal Perspex barriers for officers’ safety and real-time location information on each vehicle to assist with deployment. These will be field-tested during the vehicle’s initial months in operation.

There are more than 2000 primary response vehicles currently in the Police fleet, all of which will be replaced when they reach the end of their useful life; meaning the Czech-built products will for a while at least run alongside the Holdens (and Fords before that) that have been a backbone for decades. The new contract in fact broke a reliance on Australia-sourced large cars that lasted for 50 years.

Police intend to have 101 Superbs on duty before the end of June with a further 386 scheduled to hit the road by the end of the year.

Vehicles will be initially deployed to training staff in districts and at the Royal New Zealand Police College in Porirua. 

The full roll out is expected to take four years. One requirement from Police for the winning contractor is for it have a strong service network - a cinch for Holden (and Ford), as they had significant-sized franchise set-ups. Less so Skoda.

While the Skoda dealer network has not increased, the brand’s general manager, Rodney Gillard, has appointed more service agencies over the past year, mainly to cater to the Police requirement for quick turnarounds of frontline fleet cars.

Police say the cars also stood out because the engines had lower CO2 emissions counts than cars they already used, though in both instances the factory-cited outputs are still well above the 105 grams per kilometre average that the Government hopes to instil soon.

Coster says Police are committed to reducing their carbon emissions even further “and, as part of our 10-year plan to achieve an emissions-free fleet, we’ve begun discussions with Skoda around what opportunities there may be in the future.

“While not currently a viable option for our fleet, hybrid technology continues to develop and open up further opportunities.”