I recent.y wrote about the travails of EVs that are recently coming to the forefront. Tesla stock is down to about 190, having peaked at 296 last summer, and in the last month or so the stock price has dropped close to 30%. Hertz just sold about 1000 EVs, losing millions of dollars, because people did not want to rent them. Last month in Chicago there was chaos as the EV chargers were not working because of the very cold weather.
While this is bad news for electric autos, what is happening with electric buses (EBs)? Can the situation be any worse for EBs? … Yes it can!
From Fox Business:
Cities from coast-to-coast are grappling with broken-down e-buses that cannot be fixed, are too expensive to fix, or they have scrapped their electric fleets altogether.
Officials in Asheville, North Carolina, recently expressed frustration that three of the five e-buses the city purchased for millions in 2018 are now sitting idle due to a combination of software issues, mechanical problems and an inability to obtain replacement parts.
Earlier this month, The Denver Gazette reported two of the four e-buses Colorado Springs’ Mountain Metropolitan Transit acquired in 2021 are not running. They cost $1.2 million a piece, mostly paid for by government grants.
One of the large makers of electric buses, Proterra, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August. The company, founded in 2004, rose to become the largest e-bus company in the U.S., representing nearly 40% of the market prior to going belly-up.
Asheville’s interim transportation director, Jessica Morriss, told local outlet WLOS-TV it has been impossible to get parts since Proterra filed for bankruptcy last summer. However, Asheville – and several other cities – had problems with the company’s buses long before then.
And the beat goes on …
Still from Fox Business:
In 2020, The Philadelphia Tribune reported SEPTA’s entire $24 million fleet of Proterras had been pulled out of commission. A spokesperson for the transit agency would not get into the specifics of why the 25 buses – the third-largest fleet of all-electric buses in the U.S. at the time – were put on ice.
San Joaquin Regional Transit District in Stockton, California, the Regional Transportation Commission of Washoe County in Reno, Nevada, and the Transit Authority of River City (TARC) in Louisville, Kentucky, were also struggling with Proterra buses sitting idle.
In Nov. 2022, WDRB-TV reported that TARC’s entire fleet of Proterra electric buses had not operated in two years. The outlet said $9 million had been shelled out for Louisville’s e-buses.
Note that other than Reno these cities do not have much in the way cold, Chicago-like weather. One can only imagine the disaster that electric buses would be in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, or Kansas City!
The real life experiences with electric buses can only be referred to as another ‘BB,’ … ‘Biden Boondoggle!’
1/30/24