Australian police now have a Tesla Model X

Can an electric highway patrol car work? If it can work in Australia, with occasionally vast chasms between its neighbourhoods, it can surely work anywhere.

Thus we shall keep a very interested eye on this one-off (for now) Tesla Model X, wearing the livery of the Victoria police force’s highway team.

“Victoria Police purchased the five-door, five-seat SUV as part of a feasibility study into developing fully integrated electric, IT-based police vehicles for fleet use,” the force says, saying it’ll work alongside Tesla engineers to see how well all of the necessary law-enforcing tech slots into the Model X.

“This vehicle is unlike any other Victoria Police has ever had in its fleet and could well be the future of road policing in this state, country and the world,” says the force’s road policing assistant commissioner, Stephen Leane.

“There is also a great environmental benefit to electric vehicles and considering our state highway patrol vehicles travel thousands of kilometres on the road per year, we should always be looking at ways we can lessen our impact on the environment.”

We suspect there’s also great benefit to a ginormous, crim-swallowing capsule that can hit 60mph from a standstill in sub three seconds. Those fleeing utes surely stand no chance.