rising to the bait...
1) the top speed of a Prius is as high or higher than that of most of the speeds of high-speed chases, even, i'd bet, loaded with a full complement of police gear.
2) no car can outrun radio communications.
3) i'd bet a prius could be modified to have a secure back-seat area for an apprehended perp, even if it needed to have special locks to prevent the back seats from being lowered, and maybe a second grille above the headrests...
i don't think there's any reason a prius couldn't do regular police work. what it lacks is the acceleration of the 440 hemi-cuda block everyone lusts after, but once the acceleration phase is over, items 1 and 2 take over.
you guys know way more about this than i do, but could you offer opinions or better, experiences, where acceleration made the difference? my prius could run uphill on either side of the California Sierras at 85
mph on cruise-control and never miss a beat, so long as traffic was moving at that rate, and it usually was.
and since most police cruisers are NOT run under wide-open-throttle acceleration every few minutes, for AVERAGE use, the prius would let many police forces save budget money on gasoline and put it to more productive uses. taxpayers might approve of that, too!
