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City health officials say nearby residents should stay indoors as much as possible, wear a mask outside, avoid strenuous physical activity and close windows and doors. Decommissioned buses were burned during a fire at the SEPTA Midvale Depot in North Philadelphia on June 5, 2025. (Emma Lee/WHYY) From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know! A fast-moving fire erupted early Thursday at a transit bus lot in Philadelphia filled with dozens of decommissioned vehicles, sending a thick plume of black smoke into the sky but causing...

The electric buses in question were made by a company called Proterra, which went bankrupt two years ago.. A city in Washington is selling nearly half of its electric bus fleet following reliability issues and difficulty getting replacement parts. The Everett City Council voted earlier this week to sell nine of the electric buses, of which only four are in service right now, because of reliability issues, including critical sensors and components that have been failing since they went into service. The city is now looking to purchase retrofitted diesel buses so there are no gaps in service. According to...

Joe Biden tried to bankroll the use of electric school buses at government schools across the country. But as the electric buses continue to have massive reliability issues, some schools regret taking the federal handouts and now want help from the Environmental Protection Agency to get themselves out of the program. ... There are at least six districts reporting massive problems with Lion Electric school buses they bought through the federal program. ... The two electric buses received by Yarmouth Schools have been with the district for a year and a half, but they have only been used a few...

Austin, Texas, planned to transition all its city buses to electric, but the ambitious climate-friendly goal has come to a screeching halt. The Austin Monitor reports that 46 new electric buses – costing around $1 million each – will be in storage for at least a year due to lack of charging infrastructure to keep them running all day. The buses were manufactured by now-bankrupt Proterra, which has left city transit districts across the country with fleets of inoperable buses. Proterra was acquired by Phoenix Motor Inc., which the Monitor reports is struggling to service warranties and repair technical issues....

Maine’s Department of Education is reportedly urging school districts to stop using taxpayer-subsidized electric school buses that were purchased within the last year. The districts reported problems with the new buses, which were supplied by Canada-based Lion Electric Co., last fall ... The windshields on the buses would leak whenever it rained, as the glass didn’t appear to be securely in place. concerns about mixing electricity and water from the leaking windshields led them to stop driving some of the buses. The buses, which cost about $345,000 each, were also sold with misaligned or incorrect lettering on the sides, and...

Cities coast-to-coast grappling with broken-down e-buses that cannot be fixed .. Between the federal government, states and municipalities, untold billions in taxpayer dollars have been spent adding electric buses to transit fleets across the U.S. in an effort to reduce carbon emissions. However, 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,...

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — The city of Asheville's purchase of five electric buses in 2018 has turned into a multi-million-dollar loss. The buses have been broken or unable to run because of software and/or mechanical issues, making them an expensive and disappointing purchase, according to city maintenance and transportation staff. ... Currently, three of the five buses are idled, with one that has had a broken double door since July. “We haven’t been able to get new doors,” Asheville's interim transportation director Jessica Morriss said. “There's no third party that makes a door. We'd have to get custom-made doors.” Each of...

An electric double-decker bus caught fire in southwest London on Thursday, prompting the city’s transportation agency to remove a fleet from service as a precaution while the incident is investigated, according to reports. Passengers on the bus in Wimbledon during rush hour had to be evacuated, but no injuries were reported, according to BBC News. Video of the incident show flames and smoke engulfing an apparent rear section of the bus. "Safety is our top priority and we are working with the operator, London General, and the bus manufacturer, Switch, to investigate what happened," Transport for London’s head of business...

Officials today launched an investigation after one of Sadiq Khan's electric buses exploded during today's rush hour. Terrified residents in Wimbledon described a massive 'bang' after a double decker burst into flames during this morning's commute, sparking chaos on the roads as black smoke filled the streets. Astonishing video obtained by MailOnline shows the dramatic moment firefighters battled to put out the inferno. Transport for London (TfL) today launched an investigation after the blaze destroyed the rear and blew out the back windows ... 'It took a long time for them to get it under control with flames flying out...

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...

The Boulder Valley School District says it wants to replace its diesel school buses with more environmentally friendly green buses. However, the district is going to buy five new diesel school buses because the electric and propane-powered buses won't hold up on the more demanding routes. The district is set to approve the purchase of five new diesel passenger school buses for $714,876. The district is expected to approve the new school buses at its Oct. 24 meeting. The district said the new diesel buses are needed because, "diesel school buses are essential for mountain routes due to their robust...

A transit system run by the town of Jackson and Teton County set out to replace its diesel buses with electric, but none of the eight electric buses in its fleet are running, and the company that made them went bankrupt. Teton County and the town of Jackson had set its sights on a low-emission transit system for the county. The Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit (START) system, a joint operation between Jackson and Teton County, bought eight electric buses to complement its fleet of 31.

Tales of electric vehicle failures grow more numerous by the day.According to Cowboy State Daily, a Wyoming-based news organization, Wyoming’s Teton County and the town of Jackson purchased eight electric buses, all of which have broken down and will no longer run.The electric buses’ failure has forced Jackson and Teton County to rely on their existing fleet of 31 diesel buses.

"According to Cowboy State Daily, a Wyoming-based news organization, Wyoming’s Teton County and the town of Jackson purchased eight electric buses, all of which have broken down and will no longer run."

Michigan's fourth-largest school district is having "significant" performance issues with its expensive electric buses, issues that come after the Biden administration spent $1 billion to "transform America's school bus fleet" with electric models. During an April 19 presentation to the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education, the district's environmental sustainability director, Emile Lauzzana, highlighted a number of issues with the district's electric bus fleet. Those buses, Lauzzana said, have "a lot of downtime and performance issues" and aren't "fully on the road," despite the fact that they are "approximately five times more expensive than regular buses." The infrastructure upgrades...

This video from the South China Morning Post is almost a year old, but I only now just caught up to it. It shows a row of electric buses in China combusting rather dramatically: [Youtube video] Imagine if you were a passenger on the first bus as it was going down the street, or even stopped at a pickup point, when it combusted. You likely wouldn’t make it out. The point: if not for the hysteria over climate change, and the romanticizing of electric-everything, our various transportation- and safety-czars in the government would never allow these vehicles to be brought...

One day after officials touted the passage of the Connecticut Clean Air Act, including plans for thousands of electric vehicles to hit the road, one of the state-run electric buses caught on fire over the weekend. The blaze engulfed a CTtransit bus in a Hamden parking lot Saturday morning, sending two workers and a firefighter to the hospital, officials said. “Lithium ion battery fires are difficult to extinguish due to the thermal chemical process that produces great heat and continually reignites,” Hamden fire officials said. Two transit workers were hospitalized as a precaution after being exposed to the smoke. A...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the federal government will provide €1 billion ($1.2 billion) to cities and towns across the country in 2018 in an effort to make traffic more environmentally friendly. […] Many cities in Germany face driving bans because the air pollution is frequently above the allowed maximum levels due to the many cars’ exhaust fumes. The funds are to be invested among other things into electric buses, electric charging stations and a more environmentally friendly traffic infrastructure. …

The first Chinese-owned vehicle manufacturer in the United States unveiled ambitious plans Wednesday to eventually build as many as 1,000 plug-in electric buses a year at a refurbished RV manufacturing plant in a wind-swept, sage-dotted corner of the Mojave Desert. In a news conference on a patio outside BYD’s new energy-efficient production facility, the company’s senior vice president, Stella Li, said the first of 10 zero-pollution vehicles, already on order from the city of Long Beach, should roll off the assembly line next year. Within two years, Li said, BYD Motors expects to be producing 50 buses a year, and...

Las Vegas, NV – Nevada Senator Harry Reid today announced a $4,650,523 million grant for three electric buses in Reno that will travel from the Riverwalk District to the University of Nevada, Reno.  The Regional Transportation Commission of Washoe County will receive the funding for three 35-foot composite-body electric buses that will replace three diesel buses. “These clean buses will extend the life of Reno’s downtown bus system for years to come, which is good news for tourists, college students and Nevadans commuting to and from work,” Reid said.  “The electric buses are designed for efficiency in Northern Nevada’s high...