- Tesla’s family crossover crushed a police-spec Ford Explorer in a drag race.
- The Model Y ran nearly three seconds quicker in the quarter mile.
- Modern EV crossovers are now faster than many dedicated pursuit vehicles.
A couple of decades ago, owning a police pursuit vehicle of almost any kind was a special experience. Police cars were often built to go faster than average mainstream vehicles. Today, they’re still unique and full of beefed-up components, but they’re nowhere near the performance powerhouses they used to be. A run at a Colorado drag strip made the new pecking order painfully clear.
On one side sat a Ford Police Interceptor Utility based on the Explorer and, in this case, likely powered by Ford’s 3.0-liter twin-turbo EcoBoost V6 with 400 hp (298 kW) and 415 lb-ft (563 Nm) of torque. On the other side was a completely ordinary-looking Tesla Model Y, likely a Performance trim, the kind of crossover you’ll see parked outside grocery stores and soccer practices across America. The results were not even remotely close.
Read: Two Police Ford Interceptors Wrecked After Cops Drag Race Each Other In Washington, D.C.
The Ford managed a respectable 15.7-second quarter mile at 88.57 mph. For a nearly 5,000-pound police SUV loaded with heavy-duty cooling systems, pursuit equipment, reinforced components, and all-wheel drive, that’s honestly not bad. A decade or two ago, those numbers would have sounded genuinely quick for a law enforcement vehicle. Of course, the Tesla was long finished with the race before the Ford.
The Model Y Performance ripped through the quarter mile in just 12.9 seconds at 111.96 mph, absolutely demolishing the police-spec Explorer by nearly three full seconds. More telling was the trap speed difference. By the end of the run, the Tesla was moving over 23 mph faster than the Ford. That shows just how hard it was pulling at the big end compared to the Explorer.
The altitude may have widened the gap, too. Sitting roughly 5,800 feet above sea level, the Colorado track is notorious for hurting combustion engine performance thanks to thinner air. Turbocharging helps the Ford compensate somewhat, but the Tesla is far less affected by altitude because it doesn’t rely on atmospheric pressure for combustion.
Of course, none of this shifts the game very much. Police departments aren’t switching to EVs anytime soon. Citizens won’t be switching to them in the hope of outrunning police either. It’s just fun to know that a mainstream crossover can smoke a cop car if it had to.
