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O.C. firm behind Super Bowl ‘green police’
February 9th, 2010, 2:48 pm · 5 Comments · posted by Pat Brennan, science, environment editor
The electric, stand-up police scooters that seem to be popping up everywhere — including in a recent Super Bowl commercial — are the creation of a Costa Mesa company. 
The “green police” were featured prominently in the ad for Audi during the Super Bowl, but the vehicles and their growing use by law enforcement are quite real.
Both the standup scooter — called T3 Series Electric Standup Vehicle — and its lithium-ion batteries have been distributed worldwide by T3 Motion, Inc.
The company says it recently hit a landmark: 5,000 of the batteries shipped to a variety of agencies around the globe. The batteries, with a range of 25 t0 50 miles, can be swapped out in minutes, so their range is limited only by the number of backup batteries on hand.
T3 Motion also has shipped out 2,000 of the vehicles themselves.
Marketing manager Jeff Simpson said the company tailored the vehicle for use by agencies. They are not available to consumers.
“We have a vehicle that the market helped design,” he said.
Some 500 law enforcement, government and security agencies use the devices, which can hit 20 mph and are ideal for tight, crowded spaces, indoors or out. Their turning radius is zero degrees.
The company says they’ve been deployed from Canada to New Zealand, and from New York and Los Angeles to the United Arab Emirates. They’re used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Acapulco Police and a variety of other law enforcement agencies.
In the United States, they’re used by Target, the military, Disneyland, Google, Apple and eBay. They’re turning up on college campuses, at sporting events, even big shopping malls like the Beverly Center.
Orange County users include Irvine Police Department, Lake Forest, John Wayne Airport, Chapman University, Kaiser Permanente in Anaheim, Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, Irvine Spectrum Center, the Block at Orange, Laguna Hills Mall, the Shops at Mission Viejo, the Disneyland Resort, and Marriott Newport Coast Villas.
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The only thing missing was Green Police Chief Al Gore taking off in his Gulfstream V to spew more of his global warming garbage.
I have to say…when I saw that commercial I looked over at my husband in disbelief!
To make a parody of the “Green Police” (song and all) while showing helicopters and police attacking homes and people who do NOT recycle the way the current POLICE STATE or should I say NANNY STATE thinks you should was extremely offensive.
If they were making fun of these people who preach and scold about how we dispose of our PERSONAL waste it would be funny…but the more I watched? It looked like the road we are being led down like sheep to the slaughter…NO, not a “Good, or even Funny” commercial.
Lori I couldn’t have said it better! The way things are going in Calif. we are in big trouble. We have the “greenies” wanting to monitor everything from cow farts to the CO2 I exhale. And let me say loudly CO2 IS NOT A GREENHOUSE GAS!
As a commercial it did exactly what is was designed to do, it has people talking. Frankly I think it is a great statement about the tactics used by and future of environmentalism than anything. While a little over the top, it nailed the aggressive and intrusive side of the so called green movement. It pointed out how, if left to their own devices and not checked by people with common sense, we very well could find ourselves being jailed for simple things like litering, omissions and other seemingly trivial acts. I think it was thoughtful, funny and pretty right on with their tagging of the green movement as another politically correct fad that is leading to more people being told how to live their lives by others and the potential of force becoming the ultimate method of reaching their goals.
The “Greenies” sold us on plastic bags twenty some years ago, “to save the trees,” now we have a landfill and litter problem…unintended consequences!!!