Huge Problems With Proterra Electric Transit Buses In Many Cities, Though CTA And PACE Say No Concerns – Wirepoints

By: Mark Glennon*

Heralded as a renewable energy triumph, electric transit buses made by Proterra attracted major public investments in the Chicago area, Bloomington-Normal and many other metros around the country.

Calamity resulted from many of those purchases, with stories now common about disastrous performance, cost overruns and buses sitting unused. No problems are being identified, however, by PACE, Chicago’s regional transit authority that has ordered Proterra buses, or by the Chicago Transit Authority, which has Proterra buses in operation. But for Connect Transit in the Bloomington-Normal region of Illinois, Proterra buses are a fiasco.

Proterra was widely regarded by green energy enthusiasts as a darling of the transportation sector. President Biden “all but endorsed Proterra,” the Washington Examiner wrote, “at one point taking a virtual tour of a Proterra manufacturing facility in South Carolina in 2021, where he revealed he used to be a bus driver.”

But problems plagued the company’s electric buses from the outset. “There were flashing red lights from its start,” wrote the Wall Street Journal. “The company had a history of defective manufacturing and costly repairs.”

The company filed for bankruptcy in August, though its bus transit division recently sold to Phoenix Motor Inc. (Nasdaq: PEV). The January cold snap aggravated performance issues in many cities, though problems preceded both the bankruptcy and the cold.

Stories of Proterra bus performance issues are now common around the country, some of which are described by the American Energy Alliance, the Institute for Energy Research and Fox Business. Examples from there and other sources include the following:

• In Philadelphia, all Proterra buses were taken out of service in February 2020 “due to both structural and logistical problems – the weight of the powerful battery was cracking the vehicles’ chassis, and the battery life was insufficient for the city’s bus routes,” according to the Washington Free Beacon.
• The entire fleet of Proterra electric buses in Louisville had not operated in two years in November 2022, for which the city had paid $9 million.
• In Ann Arbor, Michigan, the school district says launch of four Proterra school buses has been a struggle due to cost, downtime and performance issues. They cost five times what a regular bus would cost and the charging infrastructure was four times more expensive than estimated. Aside from the bus cost, it took another $1,200 to $12,000 or more for a basic EV charger and infrastructure-related costs.
• Jackson, Wyoming, has put its fleet of eight electric buses out of commission indefinitely.
• In Austin, Texas, the city signed a $46 million deal with Proterra in 2020 for 40 buses. Austin’s Capital Metro has six of them in operation while they await another 17 that have been built but are sitting in Proterra’s South Carolina factory because chargers for them are not yet available.
• Broward County, Florida, bought e-buses from Proterra for $54 million, and the first batch operated for an average of 600 miles before breaking down, while the second batch averaged 1,800. The county’s much less expensive diesel buses average 4,500 miles between failures.
• In Asheville, North Carolina, 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.
• For Metro Transit in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, electric buses lost 40% of their range in the winter. In Duluth, the city spent years working to address issues, with Proterra embedding a technician in Duluth to fix problems, which included difficulty climbing hills.
• Most recently, the City of Edmonton filed an against a U.S. $82 million claim over its Proterra buses’ poor performance. Proterra began supplying battery blankets to each bus to improve the range, Edmonton says, the city only received a portion of them and it’s unclear if the blankets actually help. Aside from the batteries, the city claims a number of other problems, including gearbox and steering box failures, issues with stanchions and bell pulls, and cracks in the composite body structure that have kept most of the buses off the road. At most, the city has 28 of the 60 buses on the road at any given time,” it says.

I reached out to PACE and the CTA to ask if they’ve had any problems.

PACE’s spokesperson had no comment on Proterra problems because, she said, it had none of its buses in operation. That’s in contrast to its 2022 announcement, to much fanfare, that it was purchasing 20 Proterra buses in 2023, anticipating that at least some would be in service that year. It was part of PACE’s goal of having an all-electric fleet by 2040, they said.

“The future has arrived,” said PACE’s executive director after riding their first electric bus in 2022. Congressman Sean Casten, a major renewable energy supporter, added that, “Pace’s battery-electric bus is a great step towards cleaner transit systems and green innovation.” Casten sponsored a grant for electric transit vehicles that was included in the U.S. House Appropriations Bill for FY2023.

Why still no Proterra buses in operation? I asked that in a follow-up. “The delays, in part, have been caused by Proterra’s bankruptcy and subsequent sale to Phoenix Motorcars, who will now fulfill our contract,” answered PACE’s spokesperson.

The Chicago Transit Authority last year announced it had purchased 22 new Proterra buses, nearly doubling its electric fleet, at a cost of $26.2 million. The CTA in 2021 said the buses cost $900,000 apiece.

Responding to my question about whether the CTA has had any problems with Proterra buses, its spokesperson said “Proterra electric buses are tested to perform year-round in Chicago. Overall our electric buses have performed well this winter season, and we have not experienced any challenges with our fleet related to cold weather.”

But she also pointed to a 2023 Associated Press column that says “to make electric buses work, the CTA has had to go to great lengths and expense. It built fast-charging sites on both ends of [a route served by an electric bus] that plug into the bus rooftops.”

It’s unclear whether those costs were included in the CTA’s total cost estimate for transitioning to a fully electric fleet by 2040. In 2022, the CTA issued a report saying, “Overall, scenarios transitioning to an electric bus fleet would be $1.7 to $2.9 billion more costly relative to comparable diesel scenarios, for the combined operating and capital costs evaluated over the 2022-2040 period.”

The unconcern at PACE and CTA is in stark contrast to Connect Transit in the Bloomington-Normal area.

A Proterra bus debacle there has been heavily documented by BLN News, a local watchdog outfit. Nine of Connect Transit’s 12 Proterra buses were not in operation recently for a host of reasons, according to BLN. BLN reports here, here and here contain scathing internal emails and letters by Connect Transit maintenance people and other officials describing a multitude of problems that quickly arose with Proterra buses after minimal use. A Breakthrough Ideas video interview of BLN’s Diane Benjamin on Proterra buses is here.

Why no alarm bells at PACE and CTA given the problems in other cities?

We could only speculate, which we will avoid.

Oh, one other thing about Proterra: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm sold her Proterra stock for $1.6 million just after President Biden hyped the company in 2021 and before the bankruptcy. The sale was among nine times Granholm violated stock disclosure laws in a single year.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.

UPATED AND CORRECTED:  This column was updated to delete an image of an electric bus at a PACE announcement that was incorrectly identified as a Proterra bus.