Hide your wallet, ‘investors’ breathe new life into Proterra after company’s bankruptcy filing

The electric bus scheme barreled in with a “zero emission” tagline, and if you ignore the environmental cost to manufacture the darn things, a large number truly have become zero emissions vehicles... but only because they’re now sitting in municipal lots broken down and unused—how painfully ironic.

Earlier this week, Asheville, North Carolina reported that 60% of the e-bus fleet it purchased in 2018 was out of commission; earlier this month, we learned that 50% of Colorado Springs’s fleet, purchased in 2021, was also not in use; it’s the same story for Louisville, Kentucky’s fleet, which by November 2022 was 100% out of commission (and had been for 2 years); Florida’s Broward County received two batches of buses, with the first batch averaging 600 miles before breaking down, and the second batch averaging 1,800 miles before going belly-up. (For reference, a diesel bus averages a “failure” every 4,500 miles.)

All of these revelations come on the heels of this, reported by Breck Dumas at Fox News today:

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, but suggested the issues might be covered under the manufacturer's warranty.

Then in Sept. 2021, the Daily Bulletin out of California reported that ‘As of August, Foothill Transit, based in West Covina and serving the San Gabriel Valley, parts of Los Angeles and Pomona Valley, had 13 idled battery-electric buses out of 32 in its fleet. At one point, the agency indicated up to 67% of its electric buses were not operating during 2019 and 2020.’

Needless to say, after more than 100 years, the technology isn’t there.

As Dumas noted, a major part of the issue is that the company that made the buses, Proterra, filed for bankruptcy last August, and it’s been “impossible” for the bus buyers to get parts or service since then, even though serious quality control problems existed before that (as evidenced by the references to 2020 and 2021).

But don’t let a bankruptcy filing make you think the market is killing an objectively terrible product, because as Dumas also reports, Proterra is fixing “to make a comeback” and here’s why: Proterra has been split into three divisions, with the “transit bus” operation being purchased by another E.V. company, Phoenix Motorcars (PM). PM’s chief revenue officer, Jose Paul, defended the E.V. scheme; here’s this, per Dumas:

He [Paul]noted that EVs, like any new technology, have issues but are continuing to evolve and advance. When Henry Ford rolled out the Model T, it was not perfect, Paul pointed out, and says Proterra’s buses have continued to improve with each generation.

News flash buddy, there’s a big difference: Henry Ford didn’t need billions of seized taxpayer dollars to manufacture his Model T, and he didn’t need a tyrannical government to outlaw the horse and buggy. He invested his money, and simply produced a better product that people actually wanted. Ford’s business operation relied entirely on mutual consent rather than extortion, confiscation, and dictatorial federal edicts/lawfare—the electric vehicle industry can’t say the same. Ideas so bad, they have to be mandated.

Image: 42-BRT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, unaltered.

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