Ever since Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti launched a $10 million pilot program to supply LAPD with hundreds of electric BMWs, he has boasted about building the most extensive city-owned fleet of pure battery vehicles in America.
However, some of those green energy cars stay parked in a garage collecting dust, rarely used for official business – taxpayer money that appears to have been spent to meet idealistic goals laid out in Garcetti’s long-term environmental vision.
In a recent exposé by a local television station, a reporter scoured through LAPD mileage records, revealing “some electric cars are sitting unused with only a few hundred miles on them,” and with hidden cameras, found police officials allegedly misusing others for personal errands, including a manicure.
The investigative report did not mention Garcetti’s environmental policy blueprint, called the “Sustainable City pLAn,” which prioritized several ‘green’ objectives, including “the nation’s most aggressive EV (electric vehicle) procurement goal,” as described by the mayor.
The idea was introduced in April 2015 – five months before LAPD committed to lease the first batch of electric vehicles.
This morning, Mayor #Garcetti and Chief Beck discussed and displayed #LAPD‘s new energy efficient BMW fleet 🚓🔋👍 pic.twitter.com/fye8pzCtEk
— LAPD Outreach (@LAPDOutreach) June 8, 2016
The Mayor’s Office released a progress report in 2017 celebrating the outcomes produced by Garcetti’s ambitious climate agenda, including LAPD’s acquisition of energy-efficient BMWs, stating:
“More than 80 percent of all City fleet procurements in the current budget year are electric vehicles – far exceeding the 2017 target of 50 percent, and giving L.A. the nation’s largest pure battery electric vehicle municipal fleet, as well as the largest vehicle police fleet.”
The BMW i3 all-electric plug-in vehicles leased by LAPD are not used as patrol cars or in high-speed pursuits. They are supposed to benefit detectives, investigators, and community outreach.
As CBS-2 Los Angeles first reported:
Sources say some personnel are reluctant to use the electric cars because they can only go 80-100 miles on a charge.
And the mileage logs we obtained seem to back that up.
From April 2016 when the project started through August 2017, we found most of the electric cars have only been used for a few thousand miles.
Matt Petersen, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is the chief architect of the mayor’s environmental plan. Garcetti appointed him as the city’s first-ever chief sustainability officer.
The mayor wrote that his “comprehensive and actionable directive” would “permeate everything we do as a city,” and:
Reviews of our department General Managers will incorporate whether they are meeting the goals of the pLAn. The outcomes in the pLAn that require additional funding will receive priority in my annual budget process. Departments will report regularly on their progress, and any challenges they face in implementing the initiatives that the pLAn prioritizes.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck is among the city officials whose job performance directly connects to advancing Garcetti’s green agenda.
Coincidentally, he announced his upcoming early retirement three days after CBS-2 News broadcast its investigation.
Meanwhile, Garcetti – who co-founded a group known as Climate Mayors – has been rallying his counterparts throughout the country to follow his example and obtain green energy cars for their cities.
Garcetti and Petersen teamed up with leaders representing New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and several other large municipalities “to show automakers and manufacturers that our cities want over 110,000 cars and trucks in our fleets to be electric.”
That coalition intends to “do joint pilots to help ensure new EVs can be manufactured that meet the needs of cities,” and “do joint procurement to help create economies of scale and lower costs.”
Garcetti is expected to release an updated version of the Sustainable City pLAn, with revised goals, by early 2019. The mayor is considered a potential candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Mitch Englander – the only Republican on the 15-member L.A. City Council – said the money spent to supply the police department with BMW green energy cars has “been wasted to date.”
LAPD has 200 electric vehicles in its current fleet, with an additional 100 scheduled to arrive later this year.
Read more at Daily Wire
It started with a Bang and ended in a whimper too bad for the idot mayor and the idiot Greens their stuck with a bunch of electric cars that no one will use how many G note did they spend for this white elephant project?
Given a choice, most people will choose the familiar. So it’s not surprising that the electric cars are underused. I suggest a mileage check of their gas-powered vehicles will show a noticeable use/mileage increase coinciding with the introduction of the electric cars.
I also think that as the gas-powered vehicles are retired, and not replaced with more of their kind, use of the electric vehicles will increase.
On what evidence, past or present, do you make the assertion in your 2nd paragraph? Having lived in SoCal for a time and knowing the quality of David Goldstein’s work, it isn’t farfetched to expect that this BMW program will be summarily canceled in the near future, with the mayor declaring it a success so that he can continue running for governor.
The point here is that leftist politicians are never to be judged on the outcomes of their policies, but rather upon their own stated good intentions. The left-media is only too happy to oblige.
The mayor of L.A. is as much of a total idiot as Moonbeam Brown is I,m telling you that Enviromentalism leads to stupidity why else do people climb up trees chain themselves to logging equipment run around either naked or dressed as Trees,Flowers,Owls,Polar Bears and Fish go totaly vegan and sail around on Ice Bergs or walk based footed across America and get creamed by a car