Tow truck driver Steve Blunt made room for a pristine looking Polestar electric car in Mid Island Towing’s Nanaimo lot Friday, after the electric vehicle had been in limbo for four days.
The EV, owned by a Whistler couple, is essentially stuck on Vancouver Island, since there is no repair facility here to fix it, and according to Mid Island Towing, BC Ferries is refusing to let it off Vancouver Island on a tow truck.
“Frustrating, horrendous,” said the car’s owner Chris Moffett.
“I’m shocked, there’s no threat. There’s no hanging wires down, there’s no reason in my opinion or anybody here why we couldn’t transport this on the Ferries,” said Blunt, a tow truck operator and assistant manager at Mid Island Towing.
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Moffett, and his wife were returning home to Whistler on Monday when he says the two year-old EV encountered an error while they were parked waiting for the ferry in Departure Bay. Moffett said while the EV’s computer was still on, he couldn’t get it to move forward.
“It didn’t seem like a major thing, maybe it’s a computer glitch,” Moffett told CHEK News, from his home in Whistler.
A tow truck was called, but when the tow truck tried to take the EV across to Horseshoe Bay, it was denied entry on BC Ferries, due to Transport Canada regulations that have been recently enforced by the carrier, and can be applied at their discretion. Rules that Mid Island Towing Manager Mike Oldfield says are essentially trapping EV’s that can’t be repaired on the Island, here.
“If you bring an electric vehicle over to Vancouver Island, you damage it so it’s not driveable, you cannot leave the Island with that vehicle,” said Oldfield.
“Welcome to EV world, there’s enough of them on the road now, this should have been thought about a long time ago,” said Moffett.
Wednesday, Mid Island Towing booked a spot on the Seaspan ferry barge out of Nanaimo’s Duke Point. Yet, according to Oldfield, when the driver turned up at Seaspan’s terminal on Thursday, they were again denied boarding, due to regulations.
“There’s no way for us to transport electric or hybrid vehicles off of Vancouver Island,” said Oldfield.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be allowing electric cars to come over here if we can’t get them back,” said Blunt.
According to Seaspan, Moffatt’s EV was denied boarding on their barge because it was inoperable and not on a flatbed tow truck or trailer. In a statement to CHEK News the company said its prepared to support EV travel going forward.
“Following BC Ferries’ recent updates regarding the transport of damaged or inoperable electric vehicles, we remain prepared to support interisland travel for EV customers, provided all safety requirements are met,” stated the media release to CHEK News.
However tow truck drivers say seriously damaged EV’s are now amassing on Vancouver Island. So Oldfield and Blunt worry if Moffatt’s meticulous EV wasn’t acceptable to load and a new policy isn’t developed soon, EV’s that are damaged and stranded on Vancouver Island will be quickly piling up.
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