Electric buses: another bankrupt green boondoggle

American Thinker ^ | 01/09/2024 | Mike McDaniel

[SeekAndFind]

Electric buses are just like electric passenger vehicles: they’re not ready for prime time, only more so. Proterra buses are a case in point. Cities that wasted money on them found they had far less range then advertised. They commonly couldn’t complete even short, flat routes specifically designed for them. The enormous weight of their batteries cracked frames, and getting parts from the factory was virtually impossible. But to make up for their failures, they were far more expensive than reliable diesel buses. Proterra went bankrupt in August of 2023.

President Biden gave Proterra at least $10 million, and lauded it as the future: “when you start making a thousand buses a year, you’re going to need more room for customers.”  That makes as little sense as anything Biden is saying these days. And as with everything else, the Mummified Meat Puppet Administration is incapable of learning from its mistakes: 

The Biden administration is dispersing nearly another billion dollars in federal grants for school districts nationwide to decarbonize their bus fleets, despite recent inspector general findings casting doubt on the program.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in a joint announcement with the White House, said it had selected 67 applicants to receive approximately $965 million to purchase electric and low-emission school buses. The funding means the agency has now awarded nearly $2 billion for thousands of new buses across hundreds of school districts under its Clean School Bus Program, which was created in late 2021.

p>"As part of our work to tackle the climate crisis, the historic funding we are announcing today is an investment in our children, their health, and their education," Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement.

[SeekAndFind]

Image: SanJoaquinRTD. Wikimedia Commons.org. CCA-SA 3.0 Unported.

Sure, like Solyndra and other green companies that have gone belly-up, taking hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars with them. But for the MMPA, everything’s coming up roses:

The grants unveiled Monday will help selected applicants purchase more than 2,700 electric or low-emissions school buses in 280 school districts serving more than 7 million students across 37 states, according to EPA. Those awards come a year after the EPA awarded more than $875 million to 2022 applicants under the program, funding the replacement of 2,366 buses at 372 school districts.

[Carriage Hill]

"...they had far less range then advertised."

...they had far less range then THAN advertised.

[SaxxonWoods]

The people that built these buses knew they wouldn’t work, they had to know. But govt graft is the biggest business in America. Let’s see the connections between the bus builders and the politicians who ordered them.

[lowbridge]

“The Biden administration is dispersing nearly another billion dollars in federal grants for school districts nationwide to decarbonize their bus fleets”

Oh, what the hell. Kids don’t like going to school anyways.

[PGR88]

Once again, the “green energy transition” is ONLY possible due to long-term zero interest rates, ability to safely grow government debt, trust in “government science,” long-term low inflation, globalization and world peace

All of those things seem to have reversed - so expect the green energy scam to slowly die.

Leftists and government will fight it every step of the way - but its unavoidable

[DAC21]

Resident Maypo brain just gave 88 million in tax payer money to California to Pi$$ away on electric buses.

[HIDEK6]

The green scam is how democrats pay themselves.

[jerod]

Oh... You want buses that actually run every day, on time, 365 days a year. We thought you just wanted a plug in bus... We didn’t know that it actually had to run.

[Allegra]

The people that built these buses knew they wouldn’t work, they had to know. But govt graft is the biggest business in America.

Exactly. It’s all about the money. Just 20 years ago, people would be in prison for things like this.

[Red Badger]

Mummified Meat Puppet..................😁👍

[butlerweave]

The pushers of Electric Buses never hear of trolley cars

[bigbob]

Elon Musk will eventually build a bus that works.

[lurk]

These projects did not fail. They succeeded in getting money into some buddy’s pocket.

[Tommy Revolts]

The Grift is strong.

[Olog-hai]

Boston is really taking the cake. They are actually replacing trolley buses with battery buses.

[PAR35]

Before the civil rights era, Atlanta had electric buses. With overhead electric lines. More flexible than trolley cars, less flexible than stinky diesel buses.

[KamperKen]

It’s going to be interesting when an EV school bus incinerates a bus load of school children.

With the massive batteries I’m expecting not only battery fires but explosions.

[Vaduz]

Park one of those things in the back yard it could make a good work shop and a place to get out of the house now and then.

[Overtaxed]

Do they have a Flintstone drive train and braking system?

[Pennsyltucky Boy]

Perhaps the EV buses are are purchased with foreknowledge that they do not function, so that they may be converted to housing for immigrants. Or so they can house street dwelling Californians, while real public housing is constructed for the new illegal immigrants, who refuse to sleep on the streets in buses?