Larry Ellison is the founder of tech giant Oracle and a shareholder in Tesla. He says that he knows “too much” about the new Tesla Cybertruck and thus was willing to call it a “next-generation police car.” He briefly highlighted just a few of the assets that he believes make it such a big deal.
Oracle has worked in the emergency vehicle sector for some time and has already released its first police car. During a keynote address about Oracle’s vision for the future, Ellison talked about how Tesla’s entry into the popular pickup truck segment improves officer safety through technology.
For example, it leverages what Ellison called a “Tesla-like” screen that could accept voice commands for all major police functions. In addition, officers en route to a call for service can view a live feed from the body camera of officers already on the scene. That’s when he announced Oracle’s news about the Cybertruck.
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“Our next-generation police car is coming out very soon. It’s my favorite police car. It’s my favorite car actually; it’s Elon’s favorite car… It’s incredible; I don’t know too much about it … but, among other things, it’s very safe, very fast, it’s got a stainless steel body.
Ellison then pointed out a natural benefit of the Cybertruck not available with Oracale’s first-gen police car. “We don’t have to add cameras to it because we actually use their existing cameras and screen to put our application on it.” No word yet on whether or not the “bulletproof” windows touted at the reveal make it to production. They’d certainly be a benefit too.
Ellison did say that Oracle has already employed some of its tech in already-existing Tesla police cars. Electric vehicles can dramatically reduce operational costs in a fleet setting but police departments can’t use run-of-the-mill cars. That’s part of why we’ve seen a number of companies build out police-specific versions of Tesla vehicles.
Ellison has long said that he’s close to Tesla CEO Elon Musk so it does seem likely that he has a lot of inside information on the Cybertruck.