The new police cars in the Netherlands are so much slower

Legends have it that the letter ‘B’ of the Mercedes B-class stands for ‘Bingo’, the favorite game of the car’s most loyal fans. So you would quickly assume that the new police BMWs are faster than the old B-classes. But then you’re wrong. Even the Ford Kuga with 40 more hp is no faster than the old Mercedes of the police.

It is not the purpose of the service vehicles to initiate a spectacular chase. For this purpose, the police use the Rapid Intervention Vehicles, i.e. the A6s with a V6 engine. Moreover, the time saved by a better 0-100 time for a report is probably negligible. The service vehicles will probably never reach the top speed.

No more diesels

The police are now testing the BMW X1 and the Ford Kuga. If the trials are successful, the police will switch from diesel to petrol and petrol-electric. The BMW has a 1.5-liter three-cylinder and the Ford a 2.5-liter four-cylinder and an electric motor. The Kuga does not have a plug to charge the battery; the car regains energy during braking. This hybrid version is not available in the Netherlands, but it is available in Germany.

The Kuga is more powerful than the B-class when it comes to horsepower, but has almost 120 Nm less. The Kuga is 0.8 seconds slower to 100 and the BMW X1 is another 0.1 second slower. The top speed of the B-class is the highest at 219 km/h, followed by the BMW (208 km/h) and the Kuga (196 km/h). Below you can see the specifications. We have included the A6 for comparison.

Specifications of the Dutch police cars

	Mercedes B–class	BMW X1	Ford Kuga
Fuel	Diesel	Petrol	Petrol-electric
Performance	B200d	sDrive18i	FCEV
Power	150 hp	136 hp	190 hp
Couple	320 Nm	230 Nm	200 Nm
0-100	8.3 sec	9.2	9.1 sec
Top	219 km/h	208 km/h	196 km/h
	Audi A6	Audi A6 Light
Fuel	Diesel	Diesel
Power	286 hp	204 hp
Couple	620 Nm	500 Nm
0-100	5.6 sec	8.1 sec
Top	250 km/h	241 km/h

There is still a faster service vehicle

The Dutch police also have eight fully electric service vehicles in the form of a Hyundai Ioniq 5. The police bought this so that officers can get used to electric driving. With 218 hp and a 0-to-100 time of 7.4 seconds, they are slightly faster than the B-class. The top speed of the electric police car is ‘only’ 185 km/h, but that is enough: in principle, officers in ‘basic vehicles’ are not allowed to drive more than 40 km/h above the speed limit.

Ultimately, a third of the basic police vehicles must become fully electric, for which a tender process is now underway in which various brands and models will be tested. So the Ford Kuga and BMW X1 will be the remaining two-thirds, if they pass the testing phase. The police will purchase approximately 1,100 cars with combustion engines in the period 2025 to 2029.