General Motors initially introduced its Tahoe PPV at the 2013 SEMA Show, where they touted it as only a concept vehicle. Shortly after, they confirmed the new SUV would go into production, falling into the hands of interested law enforcement agencies all over the United States in Canada. Now, the first Tahoe PPVs have been delivered, with the County of Ventura in California being the first force to receive their new cruisers.
The County of Ventura is actually phasing out police sedans altogether, with plans to replace their fleet of Ford Crown Victorias and Dodge Chargers with Chevrolet Tahoe PPVs. They will receive a total of 25 Tahoe PPVs by the end of 2014 and plan to take delivery of the remaining vehicles in 2015. Many other agencies have expressed interest in the Tahoe PPV, the only full-size body-on-frame police SUV available, with GM receiving more than 6,500 orders for the vehicle since it hit the market in March.
“The safety and ergonomics of the 2015 Chevrolet Tahoe PPV are the key reasons for the sheriff’s department and our fleet operations team choosing this vehicle to replace their current patrol vehicles,” Peter Bednar, County of Ventura Fleet Operations manager explained. “The visibility from the vehicle allows deputies to better spot incidents and react faster.”
Chevrolet says law enforcement groups also prefer the Tahoe PPV as the vehicles have a low cost of ownership and high resale value. Chevrolet also offers the Caprice PPV sedan and Silverado 1500 SSV to police and other organizations, however the Tahoe remains its best-selling police vehicle.
Comments
Tahoe’s are awesome, however, I think GM should offer a AWD version of epsilon based Impala (although they don’t make AWD at this point) and give it a LF3 3.6 TT. Cops would love that!
Not likely. Police stations heart the SUV’s, and for good reason. Besides the price of admission, they’re better than the sedans in every way. Factor in high resale and they price difference probably isn’t too bad over a PPV/Charger/Taurus.
The new gen 4wd Tahoe’s are now pursuit rated and have a lot more power while getting better mpg. I see them taking a lot of sales from the Explorer cop suv’s.
The fastest (production) cop car is a Taurus, and it has a 3.5 TT with AWD, and does get better MPG then any cop SUV. Why shouldn’t Impala take some of those sales? Although SUV’s are better in lots of ways, but not in every way! Trust me, you’d rather be in high performance sedan while in pursuit as oppose to SUV. As I said, I love the Tahoe, but not every department wants an SUV,
All have ample power, all are slower than most all performance vehicles on the road anyways. Between the 3 sedans, the performance is splitting hairs anyways. They use the SUV’s for their size, durability and high resale. A police officer is much more likely to take his squad into a center median ditch to pull a U turn or hop a curb than to get in a drag race with someone. The SUV’s hold more equipment and hold up more to abuse, especially the full body on frame Tahoe. 4wd means they don’t need to have snow tires swapped out every winter as well.
AWD TT sedan sounds like a maintenance nightmare for a fleet vehicle that see’s a lot of abuse. Chargers/PPV’s RWD v8 setup has a much lower projected cost of ownership and if you go for the non ecoboost Taraus it’s fwd.
You have to consider what matters to Police departments and officers, not what’s the all out fastest. All the departments up here are switching to SUV’s and have been for a few years.
The police market is evolving quickly. Ford is converting departments everywhere from Crown Vic sedans to the Explorer. In places where the SUVs aren’t preferred the Taurus is taking over as an AWD cop car, the Charger is AWD as well (which is almost a requirement in northern areas). As good as the Caprice is performance wise and as reliable as the W body Impala is (Caprice fails some tenders for not being built in North America), they seem to be falling behind. The Tahoe was always a solid police option and continues to be as shown in this article.
I had read that the Caprice PPV was technically considered an “import” and police stations either couldn’t or didn’t want to buy it based on that. They’ve also been much harder to acquire than the Dodge or Ford so they’re really just losing all around.
That’s what I was getting at, lots of departments go to tender on these vehicles and that’s when “import” comes into play.
The Tahoe is a nice vehicle but Mr Bednar doesn’t know what he is talking about nor does he follow the benchmark for Law Enforcement vehicle testing known as the MSP and LASD vehicle tests.
If he had he would know that the Ford Interceptor Utility is the only Police SUV with a 75MPH rear crash rating, making it much safer than the Tahoe.
Secondly at the 2014 MSP testing the 2015 PPV Tahoe had brake issues where the test driver had to return it to GM and it failed to complete the test.
Then to choose a V8 power plant when Ford offers a V6 EcoBoost option with more HP and better fuel economy is irresponsible.
The Tahoe doesn’t come close to the handling of the Ford Interceptor Utility so there is more to this then choosing it for safety.
Im guessing somebody went on an all expenses paid trip.