Posted on 02/23/2024 9:05:34 AM PST by george76
Maine’s Department of Education is reportedly urging school districts to stop using taxpayer-subsidized electric school buses that were purchased within the last year.
The districts reported problems with the new buses, which were supplied by Canada-based Lion Electric Co., last fall ... The windshields on the buses would leak whenever it rained, as the glass didn’t appear to be securely in place.
concerns about mixing electricity and water from the leaking windshields led them to stop driving some of the buses.
The buses, which cost about $345,000 each, were also sold with misaligned or incorrect lettering on the sides, and other districts have reported broken rivets on the bodies of the vehicles.
Josh Wheeler, the transportation director for Winthrop Public Schools, said at a school board meeting that a failure in one bus’s power steering and braking forced him to drive the bus into a snowbank to avoid crashing into traffic. No children were on the bus at the time, but the incident has prompted the state to take action.
The Maine Department of Education is now advising school districts to take the Lion buses off the road until the state can inspect them.
Three of the four Winthrop buses were sent to Canada for repairs, and another was sent to Louisiana for a full inspection. The company is paying the district’s rental fees while the buses are being repaired.
The reports from state inspections, CentralMaine.com reported, show the buses indicate the kind of wear and tear found on older buses with higher mileage. WGME reports that the inspections initially found “minor defects,” but inspections earlier this month found the Winthrop buses’ brake lines were corroded and rubbing together.
One school district covering the towns of Bingham and Moscow reported no problems with their electric bus. The bus has been driven about 3,000 miles, according to WGME, and it passed its state inspection.
Nate Baguio, Lion’s senior vice president of commercial development, told Just The News that the company has sold over 1,600 vehicles in North America, with over 19 million road miles driven on them.
Baguio said, while he didn’t want to trivialize the issues they’re having, they are limited to two school districts, and the company is working to address those issues. “We do take responsibility for these vehicles working properly, and I think we've more than done that here. And we'll continue to do that,” Baguio said.
The company has sent service people to the districts, he said, and brought the buses back to the factory to do a comprehensive inspection.
The buses were purchased through grants received from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program. Over five years, the program is providing $5 billion to replace existing school buses with zero- and low-emission models. So far, the program has made 439 awards to 642 school districts, replacing 5,103 buses, according to the EPA.
The program comes on the heels of the Proterra debacle. Cities across the U.S. purchased hundreds of electric buses from Silicon Valley-based Proterra.
The company went bankrupt in August, having sold 550 buses over its 19-year existence. In the wake of its bankruptcy, the company left a trail of inoperable buses that can’t be repaired because the company can’t supply the parts or the technicians to address a range of issues.
In April 2021, Joe Biden took a virtual tour of a Proterra facility, using it to promote his infrastructure plan, which included approximately $6.5 billion in grants, according to the Wall Street Journal, to help replace diesel-powered school and transit buses with electric vehicles. Despite all the issues with Proterra, the Biden administration charged forward with its electric school bus program, announcing in January $1 billion to 67 applicants.
Baguio said the buses that Lion produces are different from those that Proterra sold.
Maine plans to transition 75% of its public-school bus fleet to all-electric buses by 2035. To receive the taxpayer-funded buses, each district had to trade in one of their diesel buses for each electric bus received, according to WGME.
And the moron voters will reelect the scum responsible.
EV school buses are the pits. Much worse than EV automobiles of any kind. All I ever read is how defective and crappy EV school buses are. The EV school buses manufacturers are Democrat party connected dudes, are getting Federale tax payers dollars.
They all say — Thanks Joe Biden!
so if life hands you an EV, make lemonade?
Don’t we have Nixon to thank for the EPA?
There will never be a honest election with mail-in ballots, election month, Dominion machines, no picture id required, and such.
“They are ‘defective’ only if you expect them to work...”
Guaranteed defective because a Union government idea.
An Electric Bus Caught Fire After Battery Explosion in Paris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r-yN8SugWM
most likely.
Nixon was a RINO.
The hated Nixon until they realized later that Nixon, like Bush, was one of them.
And Lion Electric is probably receiving tens of millions of federal taxpayer money.
Proterra filed for bankruptcy in November 2023. They took the money and ran. Volvo is slated to purchase their production facilities.
Climate Change is all about pay to play = Remember the Solyndra rip off.. run by an Obama pal , Billionaire George Kaiser .
“Conservative solution: Abandon failed programs. “
This almost never happens.
> “Conservative solution: Abandon failed programs.“ This almost never happens. <
Yes, you’re right. Modern liberals (“progressives”) are ruthless in pursuit of their goals. Most conservative leaders are, unfortunately, not like that. They might know what the correct solution is.
But they are not ruthless. It’s compromise, compromise, and compromise some more.
Yep. It's all a big graft where elected Democrat politicians reward their donors.
Perhaps a full copy (comments included)of every FR story on these EV buses should be sent out to every school districtrict in the country. So far, I have not heard of any school districts in my part of the country buying these things, but if I do, I will try to do due diligence to let them be aware of what they may be getting into. It just might save the taxpayers a lot of money.
Those are design features not defects!!!
Shocking
Oh, I don’t think the e-buses work on freezing days, so, no worries.
The “conservatives” across the West might oppose Leftist agendas, or at least campaign against them.
But when they get into power, they never reverse anything.
Supposedly “conservative” parties have won plenty of election victories in the last, say, 50 years, but none of the big Leftist programs were ever ended.
The political systems of the West are like a ratchet, or a diode or a sprag: they only turns one way; left.
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