No one else will say it, so we will: the BC Ferries ban on immobile EVs made no sense in the first place.
If we believe that electric vehicles burst into flames at a greater rate than cars filled with gasoline (it’s statistically the other way around, for various reasons) or that ferry crews aren’t capable of effectively fighting a hot, persistent lithium battery fire (the CEO of BC Ferries sat at Salt Spring Island Multi Space and told us the precise opposite), we have to ask: why would they let EVs aboard at all?
Short memories aside, all of humanity had a crash-course in the precautionary principle earlier this decade, and we’ve seen on Salt Spring Island more than once how even small e-bike batteries going wrong can threaten entire homes. With an EV’s battery pack being an order of magnitude larger, knowing how much the fire danger also increases would be helpful to guide policy in a region with more electric vehicles transiting every day.
Instead — and still absent any evidence an EV on a tow truck is more likely to suddenly catch fire than one that can limp itself aboard — islanders and ferry crews are going to take turns critiquing vehicle damage for clues the battery might be compromised.
If your electric vehicle is unable to move under its own power, according to BC Ferries’ website, “you will need to check” whether any damage is purely cosmetic. The policy helpfully calls out smoke, heat and “unknown fluids” leaks (as if any vehicle in such a state might have ever been permitted aboard) along with exposed wiring and signs of fire damage.
Then, at the terminal, each ferry’s crew will make a final determination on whether you’ll be allowed aboard. There’s no specific metric, but the sample pictures tell the story: flat tires, paint scratches, cracked windows and broken mirrors are considered cosmetic. For everything else, it’s a battery removal and a trip on the Dangerous Goods sailing.
That seems like a “good enough” idea for now. Charitably, the new policy seems to have taken pre-kerfuffle practices and codified a little common sense. But for a company that crunches numbers as exhaustively as BC Ferries, we wish this safety move was more transparently driven by data.