Summary
A leaked State Department document revealed plans for a $400 million contract potentially favoring Tesla, despite earlier denials.
The document indicated an aggressive bid for armored electric vehicles linked to Trump-era revisions, while Biden’s administration had only budgeted $483,000 for a related study.
Experts questioned the feasibility of using Tesla’s Cybertruck due to technical and safety issues, with Musk and the White House downplaying the deal.
Critics and security professionals expressed skepticism about replacing traditional armored vehicles with modified EVs.
Would these be used for military purposes, or for VIP transportation?
Either way I don’t think any current EV platform is suitable, but the Rivian R1S or delivery van might be the closest.
GM actually might be in the best position. They need to electrify Suburbans anyway. They could easily adapt the Silverado platform to suburbans, or the hummer EV to more of an H1 type and then work on armoring them up. But their CEO isn’t pulling the president’s strings like Tesla’s is, so what we’ll end up with it’s a shit ton of government money spent on a product no one will actually want to use.
Nah, the weight differences are huge. An armored EV vehicle would likely need to be built from the ground up.
What about the Hummer EV? Horribly inefficient but a ridiculously large battery to drag 10,000 pounds around. Surely that could carry some armor