Highway Patrol Vehicle 2025 Competition

The panel of judges included Tom Matano, executive director for the School of Industrial Design at Academy of Art University; Stewart Reed, Transportation Design chair at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design; Imre Molnar, provost and chief academic officer at College for Creative Studies in Detroit; and founding chairman of the Petersen Automotive Museum and former racer Bruce Meyer serving as a guest judge. The judges were impressed with the level of innovation and creativity this year, but one entry stood out.

"The SHARC captured the vision of the Design Challenge theme by combining functionality and problem-solving technology around a dynamic and plausible story," said Design Los Angeles director Chuck Pelly in a release.

That story takes place in Hawaii in the year 2025, where highway patrol budgets are shrinking just as they are elsewhere in the world. To meet this challenge, Subaru's SHARC automated response vehicle was conceived as an affordable and environmentally conscious option offering 24-hour highway monitoring by land or air. Powered by renewable energy, the concept meets Hawaii's strict UltraGreen carbon-neutral environmental regulations and eliminates the need for a large full-time highway patrol team.

Subaru's win wasn't a walk in the park, however, as the field of six competing entries was made up entirely of major automaker design studios. The entries were as diverse as they were radical, with vehicles ranging from the drone-deploying highway cruiser of BMW, to the hydrogen-powered, off-road-focused Mercedes-Benz Ener-G-Force. Here's a quick rundown of the other competitors' designs:

In Mercedes' vision of 2025, the highway patrol requires an all-terrain vehicle that can pursue bad guys even in the most rugged environments. That vehicle is the Ener-G-Force, a bold preview of what the successor to the venerable G-Class might look like in the future.

In keeping with the competition's green requirements, the Ener-G-Force is hydrogen-powered, with water acting as fuel for the four individual electric wheel motors. Helping maintain the G-Class' off-road reputation is a roof-mounted topographical scanner, which maps the terrain and adjusts the suspension accordingly. Mercedes was so proud of its entry, it built a full-scale version of the concept for this year's L.A. Auto Show.

Looking more like a spaceship than a squad car, the E-Patrol design is BMW's answer to Los Angeles' law enforcement needs of 2025. BMW predicts that in 13 years L.A. will be more crowded, have faster cars, and utilize alternative fuel sources.

To counter the problem of increased traffic, the E-Patrol is a two-passenger modular vehicle that can launch smaller drones to chase down a suspect. Depending on the situation, an officer can deploy either a flying drone or single-wheeled pursuit drone for cutting through traffic.

GM submitted three designs, meant to work together as a bad guy-catching team to catch. Called the "Volt Squad," the trio of futuristic vehicles consists of a cross between a motorcycle and a helicopter, a streamlined, fighter jet-like car, and a larger prisoner transport van — each respectively designated the specific roles of "Observe, Pursue, and Engage."

As you might guess from the team's name, the vehicles utilize an advanced electric propulsion system — perhaps a great grandchild of the extended-range electric drivetrain used in the current Chevrolet Volt.

Honda had two entries in this year's L.A. Auto Show contest, including one from the automaker's Advanced Design Studio in California. Another drone-using design, the "Drone Squad" consists of two vehicles.

The two vehicles consist of an Auto-Drone mission control vehicle, which can be controlled with or without a driver and recalls the Honda Ridgeline's front design, and deploy-able, two-wheeled Moto-Drones.

From Honda R&D Japan comes this futuristic take on what the CHP will need in 2025. With traffic increasingly a problem, the Traffic Crawler is nimble, with two huge wheels and the ability to slice right through L.A.'s automated vehicle-to-vehicle highways. As you'd expect from a vehicle planned for 2025, the Traffic Crawler is a fuel-cell electric Honda.

So there you have it. The future of law enforcement could include ultra-lightweight, transformable robots like Subaru's SHARC concept. Which future cop car design would you like to have protecting and serving you?