By: Mark Glennon*
“As Illinois Democrats welcome their party’s national convention next month,” the Chicago Tribune reported this week, “one of their crown jewels for environmental activism — an electric school bus factory — is fighting for its life.”
That’s Lion Electric, a Montreal-based company with a factory near Joliet, Illinois, specializing in electric school buses. The State of Illinois earlier this year said it would provide $50 million in incentives to Lion if it created 608 jobs this year and 1,228 by the end of 2028, according to Crain’s. It built its 900,000-square-foot factory near Joliet only a year ago. “In a triumphant ribbon-cutting,” as the Tribune says, “Gov. J.B. Pritzker said 1,400 jobs were coming.”
But this week it announced layoffs of 30% of its workforce, or about 300 people. The company did not say how many of those layoffs will be in Illinois, but “after three companywide layoffs, they say the plant is operating significantly below the 200-bus-per-month capacity,” reports the Tribune, and its parking lot is “eerily quiet.” The company’s stock has plummeted from a high of over $25 after its 2021 debut to just $0.62 today.
Lion says its problems stem from funding delays and challenges from U.S. and Canadian subsidy programs. Lion and companies like it, it says, are “at the mercy of government efficiency on when those funds get disbursed.”
That’s no doubt partly true because the U.S. program is indeed a bureaucratic mess, but electric school bus problems go well beyond that, all as described in a lengthy report this week from the Washington Free Beacon. Costs are prohibitively high, that report says, and reliability issues plague the sector, especially in cold weather. Wirepoints, too, wrote about those issues in March.
“We don’t want to put kids on a bus that’s not guaranteed to be able to get there, especially here in the rural areas,” one school superintendent told the Free Beacon, adding that relying on electric buses would take his district back to the “Pony Express days.” “Those who are making the policies need to get out to actually see how this is going to impact the rest of the country.”
But Gov. JB Pritzker had a different place to blame: the Fed.
When asked about layoffs at Lion Electric and other Illinois manufacturers, as reported by CapitolFax, he said this:
Listen, the Federal Reserve is responsible for where interest rates are right now, and they could lower interest rates. I encourage them to lower interest rates. That will help all these companies and help us grow the economy more than it is already growing. And as you’ve seen, some companies have struggled. Deere is in an industry that has struggled broadly. The electric car industry hasn’t struggled. It’s growing still, but it’s not growing at the same rate that it was. It will come back. But once again, interest rates are holding them back from making the investments that are necessary. So we’ve got a lot of challenges. They’re going to face the US economy.
Finally, guess who led the charge for the multi-billion dollar federal program for electric school buses?
Vice President Kamala Harris. Here she is proudly announcing the program in 2022. “One of Kamala Harris’s highest profile responsibilities as vice president has been spearheading the federal government’s billion-dollar efforts to deploy thousands of electric buses across hundreds of school districts nationwide,” the Free Beacon said.
“I’m excited about electric school buses. I LOVE electric school buses. I just love them!” Harris exclaimed with excitement. “For so many reasons. Maybe because I went to school on a school bus. Hey, raise your hand if you went to school on a school bus!”
Yes, raise your hand if you went to school on a school bus. And raise your hand if you’re tired of the government trying to pick industrial winners with your money.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
I’ve read some of the comments below and I think people need to chill out. We all have a very good platform to discuss differing viewpoints. Yes sometimes they can get heated but this is the backbone the Founders of the Constitution wanted. Freedom of Speech. This is being curtailed in the news media on so many fronts I could not begin to list them. Everyone needs to take a breath and relax for awhile. OK Now Breathe In————- Breathe Out! Repeat till relaxed.
P.S. If anyone gives me a thumbs down there will be heck to pay. Just Kidding.
Politicians always celebrate the “victory” when they spend the money up front. That’s how they measure success, by how much money they throw at something. I guess that’s because if they wait for the outcome to celebrate an actual accomplishment, there would be nothing ‘positive’ to celebrate.
Layoffs here, layoffs at Deere, the stock market took a crap…unemployment is up and fewer jobs than predicted were seen…how could this be? Could it be that…Our President and newly minted Glorious Vice President, the main stream media and their government have been lying to us?!
Perhaps the word Transitory will come out again…shouldn’t perhaps our media be asking the Moron President and his idiot vice president why the real world isn’t following their lies?
Liberals…please wake up. Look at the world, not just the movie stars, the acting and the cool kids table.
Navistar, a well established Illinois company also makes an EV school bus, why push Lion?. The issue for school districts is building out the sub transformers and high tension lines needed to operate 50 chargers daily. The EV school busses have batteries that are over twice the size of a Tesla. Then there is the little matter of fire insurance and upgrading the local fire dept to deal with training on EV fires.
I look at kaaamaaala and my skin crawls because it is obvious how she will ruin this country if elected……she is a radical and only cares about HERSELF AND THE VOTE!! Just look up what she did to calif and the people she was suppose to help and how she got there…..very dangerous!! They are trying to delete her history off the internet……because it’s awful
Now….. if only the rest of the country thought along the same lines……the radicals would be gone law and order would be restored and life would be great!! Please vote RED
JFC Mark, Ted, whoever’s actually in charge, get your house in order. You wanna be treated like a respectable website, maybe learn how to operate like one. That starts with keeping scum like the above out of here.
Look in the mirror buddy you are the problem………..!!! TRUMP 2024
Your name calling implies you are one of the uneducated………..as you can not express yourself without being FOUL!!!
WOW…… your comment is really deep……kamala much??
Danny, or whatever your names is, why would we have seen racist comments from the same IP address as you, using different names? We have, it appears, one or two jerks who post racist comments then accuse us of allowing racism. They come from the same address or from a VPN. Always come in batches of two or three at about the same time, usually when PPF has been posting, who seems to have inspired this. So we’ll have to set all comments as requiring approval to stop the VPN at least, causing some inconvenience. I’m sure you’re proud.
Annoying for sure, but I hope it works – guessing they are some kind of Democrat plant.
Like I’ve been saying for years, Democrat dirty tricks. You’re on their radar.
Mark, I know Capitol Fax ran into similar problem users not too long ago. Might want to have your web guys reach out to them to see how they solved it. Last thing this site needs is trolls.
Oh yes, I’m sure they’d be so helpful!!!
Wow Mark. I point out the racists post on your site while everyone else is fine with it and your simple mind somehow links those comments to me. You are truly delusional. I have never accused you of being racist but I have accused you of being lax on those comments. You are now trying to imply it’s my fault. Take some responsibility you clown.
I said you “seem to have inspired this” and that’s clearly true. And stop lying about our readers here being racist. You have no idea who they are. The racist comments, most of which were fake we believe, and mostly apparently posted by one or two persons, are a tiny fraction of a thousandth of our readers. You are also lying about us being lax about comments. We put extraordinary hours on that, so fuck you and your clown insult. Any more lies from you about any of that and you can hit the road.
Surely you know that being the controlling God of any chat website always carries a huge share of ongoing responsibilities. To name only a few you get to decide who gets heard and who does not, who tells the “truth” from your own set of biases and who does not, who gets encouraged and who does not, who gets rewarded and who gets punished, etc. Do you have the intelligence to weed through all of that, and do it dispassionately? Some would think it’s greatly empowering and satisfying to do all of that while others wouldn’t. You seem to struggle… Read more »
No struggle here because there is no viewpoint discrimination. That’s truth seeking.
Mark, noticed this on a site I admin…..
Some troll comes in from nowhere and agrees with the original post, but uses racist, insulting verbiage that has next to nothing to do with the original post. In our case the troll was anti-Semitic.
The a related troll, possible using the same IP address comes in and says ‘well it looks like you are racist since you disapprove of government swindlers, just like this racist does’
It is moderately sophisticated trolling. Possibly a service which does this. But just heinous and disruptive. We ban both sides of the trolling.
That’s it exactly.
It’s obvious that the author, a founder of this agit-prop mag, is not interested in anything like that, but is instead deliberately flogging the junkyard dogs into a frenzy. This article doesn’t do anything to examine the potential of new technology, nor even bad management decisions by the businesses involved. Just blame the VP because she’s pushing for new solutions? If the companies who got this funding had their shit together before they wasted taxpayer dollars, and the program worked out of the gate, do you think the mag would be APPLAUDING Harris? I’m betting not.
Incompetent companies can only waste taxpayer dollars because incompetent governments bestow money on them. That’s an obvious “root cause” that would be clear to anyone not blinded by progressive ideology.
Wow, as blatant an example of bigotry as any I’ve seen. Do you even realize what you just wrote? You can tell JUST BY THE WAY YOUR SKIN CRAWLS WHEN YOU LOOK AT HER? Shameful. Thank god most of the country does NOT think like you do. Disgusting anti-American display, and an embarassment to the country.
Save your BS remark…….She makes my skin crawl and she does it to other people also …..and most of the country does think like that cause they want their freedom and liberty not what she did to calif………do some research before saying dumb stuff!!
Do some research……she wants to take your freedom and liberty also…..maybe then your brain will understand why I and others make that remark JP and BJ appear to be trying to do the same
She is the embarassment to the country as YOU
Why are you using somebody else’s name and a VPN to scramble your IP address?
Same to you as above, Gino. And lacking any knowledge or understanding of new technology and its eventual benefit. SO glad I don’t live in the Midwest any more.
Again the Pritzker blame game instead of looking in the mirror and saying yes I f’d up again as usual
Pritzker and Democrats do not care – taxpayers are just minions to be abused. With all the election rigging and gerrymandering, there is no real threat to IL ‘elected’ Democrats.
The wheels on the electric bus don’t go round n round…….
We simply now live in a situation whether you own an ev or not you are paying for one particularly if you live in Illinois.
So much to unpack here, from gross government overreach to a Presidential candidate that sounds like a simpleton to a foreign company on the brink of bankruptcy being kept afloat by extreme leftists. But my absolute favorite thing about this issue is the way it demonstrates the egregious heavy handedness of the Governor of Illinois. JB wants to take responsibility for US fiscal policy now, dictating that Federal Reserve Chairman Powell should cut interest rates, and in fact acting incredulous that he hasn’t already done so. Given the precarious fiscal position of the state he governs, Pritzker shouldn’t be allowed… Read more »
I agree…..but remember this…he’s loaded and what ever the fed does will not affect his life style or anything he does. In my opinion he cares about nothing but himself!
“I know of no company producing reliable electric buses that can be maintained at reasonable costs.” That’s where our taxpayer-funded subsidies help – a disincentive to run the operation efficiently and profitably, right?
So don’t taxpayers have a lot of challenges as they face a coming recession, unemployment, and skyrocketing taxes. Who is going to bail them out.
With this type of leadership you are on your own……vote red
Sending these electric school buses out in
This heat is asking for a thermal runaway.
Children’s lives are at risk, due we need a repeat of December 1, 1958 and loose another close to 100 students to fire before we learn the lesson. Let’s make sure the
Politicians know we will hold them accountable for ANY children harmed in These defective school buses.
Take this to the DNC and see what happens.
$5B from the EPA over five years to buy the school buses – yes taxpayers are being forced to buy these school buses which apparently don’t work to well. The recent public earnings release by Lion (LEV), which is down to 61 cents/ share, reads like a company on the verge of BK if taxpayer bailout monies don’t show up soon. There is now a clear pattern to these Biden/ Harris boondoggles with them being shopped to blue state governors who will add state taxpayer monies to the pot. So Pritzker has been very much ‘a partner in crime’ for… Read more »
Are electric school buses in danger of catching on fire if even one little girl starts crying on one? Just curious.