LA Auto Show Design Challenge 2012: Highway Patrol Edition

New forms for Mister State Trooper

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Lord, won't you enforce the law in a Mercedes-Benz? Photo by LA Auto Show Design Challenge.

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By: Davey G. Johnson on 11/21/2012

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We noted a couple of months back that the theme for this year's LA Auto Show Design challenge was "Highway Patrol vehicles in the year 2025." Now, with the show's press days but a week away, the pie-in-the-sky po-po-machine renderings have been made public.
The wacky heavy-industrialists at Subaru decided that rather than just design a police vehicle for California, they'd pull a page from Leonard Freeman's playbook and move the setting to Hawaii. For good measure, they also deigned to pay tribute to Denis Leary and the FDNY. Distressingly, their SHARC (Subaru Automated Highway Response Concept) has little, if anything, to do with Teutonic metal-mite Udo Dirkschneider. Rather, it's some type of autonomous vehicle that runs on renewable energy. We assume that said renewal energy is not chum. Or the limbs of surfers.
Honda R&D Japan went obvious, plucking the heartstrings of '70s cop-show aficionados with the “CHiPs” 2025 Traffic Crawler. Designed with an eye toward another a boom in California car culture once we all adapt to the joys of autonomous motoring, Honda's three-wheeler splits the difference between nimble and tough.
Their counterparts in the company's Advanced Design Studio came up with a two-vehicle system that would seem right at home in Bubblegum Crisis, an anime series which borrowed liberally from Blade Runner, thus looping everything back onto a futuristic Los Angeles. No mention was made of either boomers or skin-jobs, but the CHP Drone Squad features a future-butch van and a bike that can either be used as a drone or a ride-on vehicle.
On a similar note, General Motors delivers the Volt Squad, a three-vehicle unit built around the core principles of “Observe, pursue and engage.” All three machines would be powered by some future variant of the Volt's powertrain.
BMW DesignworksUSA's E-Patrol (Human-Drone Pursuit Vehicle) is designed to be operated by a team of two — a driver and a drone operator. The right-seater has his choice of airborne or wheeled drones, suggesting that future perpetrators might need to invest in anti-aircraft weaponry if a heist is expected to be successful. Alternately, there's always cybercrime.
Mercedes-Benz thinks that 2025 will likely be merely a more futuristic version of the present. As such, they've taken their Ener-G-Force concept from this year's show and polizei-ified it. After all, if they've been churning out variations on the archaic Geländewagen for 33 years, thirteen years would be but a blip in the life of this newfangled G-Class.
So, faced with a choice of future police states and future state police, which would you choose? Have it out in the comments below.


Read more: http://www.autoweek.com/article/20121121/losangeles/121129960#ixzz2D2hhBUPA