Car News: Ford's New Software Will Use Heat To Disinfect Police Cruisers

Ford unveiled new software Wednesday that will help disinfect police vehicles amid ongoing concerns over coronavirus exposure. It follows requests by various police departments across the country for better ways to disinfect vehicles.

The software will first be implemented in the Ford Police Utility vehicle, a version of the Ford Explorer SUV designed for law enforcement. The software will use the car’s ventilation system to bring the temperature inside up to 133 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes. Ford said it was long enough and hot enough to kill around 99% of all germs in the car.

“Officers can now use this self-cleaning mode as an extra layer of protection inside the vehicle in areas where manual cleaning is prone to be overlooked,” Ford police brand marketing manager Stephen Tyler told reporters. “This virus is an invisible enemy and we are proud to provide a solution to help the law enforcement community fight it.”

Once activated, the software will warm the engine up while the heat and fan settings are set to high. It will monitor the car’s internal temperature until it reaches 133 degrees and keep the car at that temperature for 15 minutes. A pre-set pattern will flash from the car’s tail and hazard lights until the process is completed. The car will then start a cool-down sequence once finished to bring temperatures back down.

Ford police vehicles manufactured from 2013 to 2015 will require a technician to plug a device into the car’s electronic diagnostic port to start the process. Newer vehicles can start the process through a pre-set series of presses to the cruise control buttons.

“You certainly don't want it to be something that gets activated accidentally so it is a complicated enough cycle that you'd have to be paying attention to what you're doing to, to get it to start,” Ford director of passenger vehicles and SUVs Bill Gubing told reporters.

Gubing cautioned there are no safeguards in place to prevent the process from starting while someone is inside the car. He said adding sensors would have forced them to take longer developing the software, but assured Ford wasn’t done working on it.

“We'll continue to work with our agencies and get their feedback on how well it works and look at how we adjust if need be in the future,” Gubing said. “But right now, for speed, it's really officer or initiator dependent.”