Tesla has reportedly built its own police car based on the Model 3 electric sedan in the United Kingdom, and it plans to use it to test the UK emergency vehicle market.
There are already plenty of Tesla police cars out there. Many police departments have done the math and figured out that they could save a lot of money by upgrading their fleets to Tesla vehicles, especially the Model 3.
We previously reported on the Bargersville Police Department in Indiana, which purchased several Tesla Model 3 vehicles. It found after the first full year of using the Tesla Model 3, they had already saved over $6,000.
But with these projects, the police departments buy the vehicles from Tesla and have them modified to fit their needs as patrol cars.
In this case, Tesla has apparently built the police vehicle itself and plans to offer it for testing to emergency services across the UK [via Auto Express]:
Tesla UK has revealed a police liveried Model 3 saloon fitted with blues-and-twos, which the company says will be available to emergency services across the UK for trial and assessment.
Here’s the vehicle that Tesla unveiled:
The automaker didn’t reveal any specs for the new vehicle, but it looks like it could be a Model 3 Performance.
With over 300 miles of range, a top speed of 162 mph, and an acceleration from 0 to 60 mph in just 3.1 seconds, it should more than fit the needs of a patrol car.
In recent years, the Model 3 has become the best-selling electric car in the UK and at times, even the best-selling car, period.
However, there have not been any reported Model 3s used as police vehicles.
A handful of police departments in the UK have started to acquire electric vehicles, but to date, they’ve mainly been Nissan Leafs and BMW i3s.
Kieran Culkin says he doesn’t care if his projects get badly reviewed as long as he enjoyed himself doing them.
The 42-year-old recently won best supporting actor in a motion picture at the Golden Globes for his performance in A Real Pain.
He tells Sky News he isn’t dependent on positive feedback, but it is “cool” when people find a connection to his work.
“I’m doing this [acting] around 36 years. I’ve been sort of trained or whatever, conditioned, to just not care what an audience response is to something,” he says.
“I’ve been in plays that I think ‘this is bad, but I’m enjoying it’. I don’t really care or if it gets poorly reviewed, I don’t really care. So I still sort of have that mentality but it’s actually quite nice that people are connecting with [A Real Pain]. To hear people that have seen it say, I know a guy like Benji or talk about him, it’s like that’s what this feeling is”.
The Succession actor stars alongside Jesse Eisenberg in the film about cousins who take a trip to Poland to see the country their grandmother left.
Culkin says taking notes from a co-star, who also wrote and directed the film, was a new and challenging experience.
“That’s tough; it just is,” he says.
“[Jesse] would give me a note, my chest would puff up and I would automatically get really defensive, like, I’m gonna hit this guy.”
Image: Culkin and Eisenberg. Pic: Searchlight Pictures
‘The biggest taboo on a movie’
Eisenberg says playing the role and being the filmmaker made him “nervous” because he sees actors giving notes to be the “biggest taboo on a movie”.
“You don’t give an actor notes – never do that. You can commit arson on a movie set before you can give an actor notes,” he says.
Image: Will Sharpe and Eisenberg. Pic: Searchlight Pictures
A Real Pain is set in Poland and is inspired by a real-life trip Eisenberg took with his now wife Anna Strout more than 20 years ago to retrace his family’s roots.
“Had the war not happened, this is where I would be living,” he says – and so looking at Poland and its history became a huge inspiration to him.
The Now You See Me actor first wrote a play, The Revisionist, which debuted off-Broadway in 2013, and spent the decade redeveloping it to become the “buddy road trip” A Real Pain.
Image: Kieran Culkin, Jennifer Grey, Jesse Eisenberg, Kurt Egyiawan, Daniel Oreskes and Will Sharpe (L-R). Pic: Searchlight Pictures
‘It’s this beautiful, warm, welcoming country’
The film weaves through the story of cousins reconnecting on their journey to visit, for the first time, their grandmother’s home before she was displaced during the Holocaust.
Eisenberg is currently in the process of gaining Polish citizenship and says his relationship with the country has changed over the years.
He says: “With Polish heritage, you grow up hearing that it was the site of the murder of all of your family and you hear that it’s bleak and especially if you’re a kid of the 80s and 90s like I am, you hear about bread lines from the Soviet era. And so going there was just unbelievably the polar opposite of what I had heard growing up.
“It’s this beautiful, warm, welcoming country and not only beautiful, warm and welcoming, but like what they did for me and allowed me to do, to tell my family’s story, to be able to shoot at a concentration camp, to be able to shoot on this very hallowed grounds of the various locations we were on was just amazing. I’m in such debt to them.”
A Real Pain looks at how a person’s family history can shape who they become.
Eisenberg says growing up with a mother who worked as a birthday party clown helped him see acting as an attainable career.
He says: “Every morning I saw this woman get dressed up in a ridiculous outfit and put on crazy face makeup and tune her guitar to the piano. So, I grew up knowing that performance was normal.
“I didn’t grow up thinking that people who perform are weird and actors are weird and why do they? You know, I grew up thinking to behave in this silly way can be a professional job.
“So it just stayed in me. And now what we do is kind of ridiculous, but we take it seriously.”
UK music sales hit a 20-year high of £2.4bn in 2024, helped by pop megastar Taylor Swift’s latest album, and driven by streaming and the vinyl revival, figures show.
Revenues from recorded music reached an all-time high, more even than at the peak of the CD era, according to annual figures from the digital entertainment and retail association ERA.
Total consumer spending on recorded music – both subscriptions and purchases – topped the previous record of £2.2bn in 2001, ERA said.
Image: Noah Kahan performing during the Soundside Music Festival in September. Pic: AP
Takings from streaming services including Spotify, YouTube Music, and Amazon rose by 7.8% to a little over £2bn.
Almost £200m was spent on vinyl albums, an annual uplift of 10.5%, while CD album revenues were flat at just over £126m.
Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department was the biggest-selling album of the year, aided by her record-smashing worldwide Eras tour.
More than 783,000 copies were bought, nearly 112,000 of them on vinyl – making it 2024’s biggest-selling vinyl album.
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The biggest single of the year was Noah Kahan’s Stick Season, generating the equivalent of 1.99 million sales.
ERA chief executive Kim Bayley said 2024 was “a banner year for music, with streaming and vinyl taking the sector to all-time-high records in both value and volume.
Ms Bayley called it the “stunning culmination of music’s comeback which has seen sales more than double since their low point in 2013. We can now say definitively – music is back.”
Music revenues grew by 7.4% in 2024, while video rose by 6.9%, and games fell by 4.4%, according to preliminary figures.
Subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV grew by 8.3% to £4.5bn – almost 90% of the sector’s revenues.
Deadpool & Wolverine was the biggest-selling title of the year, with sales of 561,917 – more than 80% of them sold digitally.
Despite the games sector’s 4.4% decline last year, it remains nearly twice as large as the recorded music business.
Full game sales saw a drop-off with PC download-to-own down 5%, digital console games down 15% and boxed physical games down 35%, in favour of subscription models which grew by 12%.
EA Sports FC 25 – formerly known as Fifa was once again the biggest-selling game of the year, generating 2.9 million unit sales, 80% of them as digital formats.
In a statement released to the media, Parks And Recreation star Plaza, 40, said: “This is an unimaginable tragedy.
“We are deeply grateful to everyone who has offered support. Please respect our privacy during this time.”
Baena, a director and screenwriter, worked with Plaza on 2014 horror film Life After Beth and 2017 historical comedy The Little Hours.
The couple had been in a relationship since about 2011 and married in 2021.
Image: Jeff Baena and Aubrey Plaza. Pic: AP
Previously, Plaza told The Ellen DeGeneres Show she and Baena “got a little bored one night” during the COVID pandemic and decided to wed after celebrating their 10th anniversary.
She said after finding a wedding officiant online to perform the ceremony in their garden, she “created a very quick love altar in our yard” where they married.
Baena wrote 2020 thriller Horse Girl, starring Alison Brie, and 2022 dark comedy Spin Me Round, both of which he also directed.
He also co-wrote the 2004 comedy I Heart Huckabees alongside director David O Russell, which boasted a stacked cast that included Jude Law, Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffman, Naomi Watts, Lily Tomlin and Mark Wahlberg.
Baena created the anthology comedy series Cinema Toast, which had an episode directed by Plaza and another starring Community actress Brie.
On X, Hollywood actor and comedian Marc Maron wrote: “Very sad about the tragic loss of a true artist and sweet guy.”
Sundance Film Festival, where Baena’s directorial debut Life After Beth premiered in 2014, wrote: “We extend our heartfelt thanks to Jeff Baena for sharing his stories and contributing to the lasting memories we’ve built together.
“Jeff, we’ll miss your wit, humour, and daring vision. Rest in peace, friend.”
Plaza had been announced as a presenter at Sunday’s Golden Globes ceremony earlier this week before her husband’s death.
Director Brady Corbet, who won best director for his film, The Brutalist, said in his acceptance speech: “My heart is with Aubrey Plaza and Jeff’s family.”
Plaza was nominated for a Golden Globe in 2023 for her role in the second series of HBO dark comedy White Lotus and is also known for Disney+ series Agatha All Along, and films including Megalopolis, My Old Ass, Ingrid Goes West, Dirty Grandpa and Emily The Criminal.
Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) confirmed it attended the residence where Baena died and said a coroner will lead the investigation.
If you are in need of support, Samaritans run a helpline which is open day and night, 365 days a year, on 116 123. You can also email jo@samaritans.org, or visit samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.
