The Dubai Police Can Chase You Right Off The Beach In A Floating 1,200 Horsepower SUV

Dubai’s police force maintains a special Luxury Tourist Patrol Fleet of police cars. In regular use, law enforcement gets around in various SUVs such as Toyota Land Cruisers and Nissan Patrols, but for both policing and polishing its public image, Dubai Police have a large fleet of fancy cars for tourists to see and photograph. Think about the Ferrari Testarossa that starred in Miami Vice, and then imagine if it had huge MIAMI POLICE stickers on it.

Over a decade ago, a Bugatti Veyron was added to the fleet, making it the fastest police car on the planet. The 250-mph (400-km/h) supercar does most of its work parked in tourist spots, despite its top-speed capabilities: the fleet has now been upgraded with a vehicle that has even more power and the capacity to float. That’s right, the force now has a nearly 1,200-horsepower Yangwang U8.

Yangwang is known as BYD’s luxury brand, and our earlier coverage of the U8 called it BYD’s Lexus. With 1,180 horsepower, the China-built U8 is one of the most powerful SUVs on sale, beating German challengers such as the 1,153-horsepower Mercedes-AMG GT63 SUV and the 1,156-horsepower Porsche Cayenne Turbo.

These are insane numbers, which translate to 0-60 times of a couple seconds. The Yangwang can do it in 3.2 seconds. If any powerful SUV ever looked like an elephant or rhinoceros wearing Nikes, these certainly do – and the Yangwang isn’t afraid of tipping its toes in the water, either.

Rather than being fully amphibious, the nearly-8,000 pound U8 has an emergency flotation mode. For 30 minutes, it can float ahead at a slow speed of 3 km/h (1.8 miles per hour) with the gasoline engine automatically switched off, and the manufacturer recommends the vehicle be checked out at a dealer afterwards.

The flotation mode is designed for situations where wading won’t do anymore, and the U8 is rated for depths up to 3.3 feet. There’s a separate Master Edition available, which can wade deeper, up to 4.6 feet of water, partially thanks to a snorkel.

The other party trick the U8 has up its sleeve is the ability to do a 360° turn on the spot, and that’s something the truck will likely demonstrate to eager Instagrammers on the Dubai streets. That’s achieved using BYD’s IWD (for Individual Wheel Drive), where the vehicle’s traction control system redistributes torque to each of the four motors, one for each wheel, depending on the situation. If the driver-side wheels spin in one direction and the passenger-side wheels the other, the vehicle will turn around like a tank.https://youtu.be/dkROmU9Bxbw?si=ubf3mWElUlSrUYXV

620 Mile Range (Kinda)

The U8 is a range-extender plug-in hybrid, so it has a 49kWh LFP battery as well as a four-cylinder, two-liter, 268-hp gasoline turbo engine from BYD. From the factory, it’s noted to have a 1000-kilometer range (620 miles), and it can do around 110 miles on battery power alone. Those figures are according to the China Light-Duty Vehicle Test Cycle (CLTC), which is noted to be the most optimistic of the usual standards.

For example, if we use the widely used WLTP (Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Procedure) norm as a baseline, an EPA rating usually corresponds to 86% of WLTP, and from range figures quoted for those of my previous electric vehicles that have also been available in the States, it’s the EPA rating that’s usually been closest to reality.

Meanwhile, CLTC is weighted towards slower urban speeds, which is where an electric car is at its most efficient (while an ICE car uses more fuel in city traffic), and that means CLTC figures tend to be inflated compared to the other standards. Chargepk’s converter would shrink that 620-mile figure to 435 miles for an estimated EPA range.

If the U8 is mostly used for intra-urban promotional duties, it’ll most likely do all its daily tasks on battery power alone. It’s about 60 miles to drive from Legoland Dubai to the other side of the emirate, which has 45 miles of shoreline on the Persian Gulf.

They Have Lambos, Too

Other high-end additions to the Dubai police’s luxury fleet give you an idea what it’s all about. As well as the Veyron, there are other supercars such as a Lamborghini Aventador, a Revuelto and a Temerario, McLarens and Aston Martins, Ferraris both stock (FF and 12Cilindri) and Mansory-tuned (812 Superfast). And the Yangwang is far from being their only posh SUV, as they also have a Rolls-Royce Cullinan and a Mansory Ferrari Purosangue.

The Humble Amphicar Was The First Amphi-Cop

By the way, the Yangwang isn’t the first floating car in police usage. The Hamburg police in Germany got two Amphicars in the summer of 1964. The dinky little floaters, famously the only mass-produced amphibious cars ever sold to the public, were only in test use – likely after a North Sea flood killed hundreds and destroyed thousands of homes in 1962 – but Hamburg officials ended up sourcing robust metal boats instead of relying on Amphicars, which could only do so much.

As the Mopo (Morgenpost) newspaper article above notes, those boats came in handy during the storm surge of 1976. Still, as Jason wrote in his earlier article, the West German, Lübeck-built Amphicars were built for rescue use, with very useful-looking equipment, including inflatable lifeboats.

Why the Hamburg police acquired two of these amphibious vehicles remains unclear. A connection to the devastating storm surge of 1962, in which over 300 people lost their lives – partly due to inadequate flood protection – seems likely. However, former Hamburg police chief and historian Wolfgang Kopitzsch told the MOPO newspaper that the Amphicars were primarily failed experimental vehicles. 

In his estimation, the vehicles would have been virtually unusable in a catastrophe like the one in 1962. Severe storms raged in Wilhelmsburg, Moorburg, Finkenwerder, and the Vier- und Marschlande region, plunging entire areas into darkness. Fences and barbed wire already hampered the use of inflatable boats. The small Amphicars would likely have been rendered useless in many places as well.

However, those Amphicars were markedly faster than the Yangwang U8 on water, as they could reach nearly 4.35 mph (7 km/h) with their 43-horsepower Triumph Herald engines. In a tight spot, those extra miles per hour could make a real difference.

Top graphic image: YangWang