With a market niche of about 800,000 vehicles, that’s a big market. If the average purchase price of  police cars is $50,000, you’ve got 40 BILLION DOLLARS worth of sheet metal and technology ready for patrol duty at any one time.

Start-up Carbon Motors plans to claim a big chunk of that market from the established automakers. How? By paying attention to the unique needs of this market. Their design is safer for officers while enabling them to be more efficient, and delivers low cost of operation plus long service life that makes the economics a slam dunk. Production isn’t slated until 2012, but with enough advance orders I’m sure they’ll gladly push that date up.

Here’s a fun video that will give you a good look at their purpose-built police car.

Carbon Motors E7 Police Car Photoshoot – Douglas Sonders Photography from Douglas Sonders on Vimeo.

Now let’s think… how long has this market been under-served? Since the 1920′s? This niche market has been waiting for someone to exploit it for almost a century. It’s surprising to me that $40BB hasn’t induced someone to figure this out sooner. Kudos to Bill Li and Stacy Dean Stephens for having the vision and courage to go after this niche. You can find more on these purpose-built police cars at www.CarbonMotors.com.