Jeremy Ward is the Managing Director of East-West Ferries, which has operated two ferries on Wellington Harbour since 1989.Jeremy spoke at a meeting of the club on 4 November on the future of harbour ferry travel, which will be fully electric ferries developed by the Wellington Electric Boat Building Company Ltd.
Two years ago, in partnership with Meridien Energy, the company began the process of manufacturing New Zealand's first all-electric, carbon fibre, zero emission passenger ferry and the first in the Southern Hemisphere.
The new ferry is expected to go into service in 2021. It will be 18.5 metre 20 knot catamaran and will carry 135 passengers, substantially more than the current East-West ferries.
The future is exciting. The company is receiving significant interest from other NZ ferry operators and will shortly expand to a significantly larger boat building warehouse in the next few months.
The company aims to develop a new ferry route from Queens Wharf to Miramar Wharf with a run time of 10 minutes, linking with an electric shuttle bus from the wharf to the airport terminal.