An American start-up automaker, Carbon Motors, has announced that it will start building the TX7 high-tech police vehicle in Indiana, as soon as it receives orders.

Carbon’s TX7 revealed

Law enforcement vehicles have special needs because of the nature of police work. Agencies can not just pick up a stock vehicle at Gus Johnson current used buyer’s guides and call it good. Carbon has seen this need and wants to make a name for itself in the market niche.

The ten-foot tall, high-tech police Multi Mission Vehicle (MMV) has a distinctively edgy polygonal design. According to Carbon, it can be a replacement for a variety of law enforcement vehicles, from command module, to personnel transport, to SWAT team uses. It is built on an existing truck platform, although Carbon is keeping a tight lid on just which one. It will have all-wheel drive, be powered by a 300 hp V8 turbodiesel engine, and have capacity for 10 inside. There is also an optional compressed natural gas version on the drawing table.

The truck will sell for $149,950 apiece, which isn’t bad considering its standard arsenal of high-tech equipment. It has a detector for “weapons of mass destruction” (they used to call them explosives), infra-red cameras, 360-degree surveillance cameras and solar panels for back-up power.

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Not Carbon’s first law enforcement foray

In 2007 Carbon announced it its intention to make the E7 Pursuit and Surveillance-police cruiser. It received just shy of 25,000 orders from 638 American law enforcement agencies. But the E7 never went into production because of difficulty in securing start-up money.

In March, Carbon was turned down by the U.S. Department of Energy for a $310 million loan to make the E7. However, the TX7 is, according to Fox News, of such a “low volume nature” that Carbon can begin building the MMVs as soon the middle of 2013, after orders have come in.

Where to build?

Exactly where the MX7 would be built remains an article of contention. Carbon had wanted the DOE loan to purchase a shuttered former Visteon plant in Connersville, Ind. According to Fox News, that deal fell through, although AOL Autos says that the Connersville public works board agreed last week to give an unnamed buyer until March 31 to close a deal on the location.

Whatever the case, Carbon says it remains committed to building the EX7 in Indiana.

Stacy Dean Stephens, a spokesman for Carbon, says the company still plans to build the E7 in that state as well, although plans to do so are now on a back burner.

MCDE Editorial