Quebec’s Lion Electric Co. transforming an industry by cranking out electric school buses

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A disrupter in an industry ripe for change, Lion founder Marc Bedard is trying to help save the environment and bolster the health of our children with EV transportation

There’s money available at the state and provincial level as well. California earmarked US$196-million for its Hybrid and Zero-Emission Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project. British Columbia has $31-million available for school buses and trucks. Quebec is likely the biggest spender, with $250-million available for school-bus electrification and another $246-million for EV trucks.

But Mr. Bedard says Lion’s sales team always finds a willing audience for its product pitch: that the company designs and builds its EV buses from the ground up, while rivals are largely modifying their old diesel-powered vehicles. In a way, Lion wants to be theNowhere is Lion’s ambition as obvious as in the United States.

Quebec’s promising launch into the big leagues of North American automaking in the 1960s ended with a whimper when General Motors closed its Camaro and Firebird plant in Boisbriand in 2002, the lone Canadian light-vehicle assembly plant outside Ontario. “When the market is going to take off on the truck side, we will be ready,” the CEO said. “The challenge for the incumbents is going to be that. I mean when the market is going to be there, most of them won’t have the manufacturing capacity to fulfill the orders.”

It was while Mr. Bedard was on the board of manufacturer Les Entreprises Michel Corbeil Inc. two decades ago, later bought by U.S.-based Collins Industries, that he started thinking about how the bus industry would evolve. He started Lion in 2008 and made diesel school buses at first while beginning to test different propulsion technologies. He decided to go all-in on EVs about two years later.

 

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What are they going to do in 7 years when electric vehicles get banned?

' Veritas Investment Research, say Lion has consistently overpromised and under-delivered, and warn the company will struggle to capture market share' Only sentence you need to know from propaganda article. That Canada can compete without HUGE tax money/bailouts plain folly.

Hydrogen is a better option for buses.

I'm trying to read this article and the f_ucking Globe and Mail is trying to get me to pay for a subscription. Screw you.

Can it stand on its own merit or is this another tax grab?

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