
Josh Wheeler, transportation director with Winthrop Public Schools, is pictured Jan. 15 with a bus from Lion Electric Co. Maintenance problems and concern over safety have kept Winthrop officials from using the electric buses regularly. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal
Pender Makin, Maine commissioner of education, wrote last month to the Environmental Protection Agency seeking answers for school districts who have received faulty electric buses.
For those schools, answers can’t come fast enough.
Of the nine Maine school districts who received buses from Lion Electric Co. paid for by federal grants, plus Vinalhaven, which bought a bus itself, six almost immediately began reporting problems to state officials, dating back to January 2023.

Two years later, the buses largely remain sidelined after having barely been on the road at all, frustrating school officials who had depended on them to safely transport students.
Officials wonder if they’ll ever get working buses, or be paid the money owed to them by Lion Electric.
In all that time, school officials say, Quebec-based Lion Electric, which has now filed for creditor protection, has been unresponsive to their questions.
Lion Electric Co. was the sole initial bidder for the Maine Department of Education’s clean bus program in 2020, which was formed to work with the EPA to secure electric buses for Maine schools with the goal of lowering emissions and improving student health.
The contract with Lion Electric expired in 2023 and the company did not bid in the next round of applications. The program continues, and other companies have now sent Maine schools electric buses that have performed without issue.
PROBLEMS FROM DAY ONE
Wide-ranging problems with the Lion Electric buses, however, began as soon as they were delivered.
Monte Selby, former superintendent of Vinalhaven School, was the first to document problems with the buses, reaching out to the state Department of Education in January 2023, just a few months after the school purchased one, though not through the clean bus program.
A year and a half later, Selby was still waiting for word on what to do.
“I am writing to all of you to express disappointment that the past 14 weeks of attempting to work out an agreement for our defective bus has resulted in no offer from Lion Electric,” Selby wrote in a June 2024 email. “As early as January of 2023, we were documenting and requesting support for a bus that had already remained idle in our parking lot for months without being safe to use.”
Chris Storer, transportation director for Yarmouth schools, wrote to the Department of Education in November 2023 saying the two buses he received from the program had problems right away, as well.
The buses did not arrive on time from Lion Electric, he said, and when they did, they were not up to code. The vehicles only had one roof hatch, not two as required. One bus was missing screws to hold the roof hatch together, and the other arrived with exposed wires inside the bus. Both buses had wire harnesses exposed on the bottom of the bus.
“This all has been very stressful on our district as we want to move to a greener, more environmental fleet, but cannot do so as we believe we have been sold lemons. The buses have not been able to live up to our district needs as they have either been put out of service or that they constantly throw error messages,” Storer wrote.
In January 2024, Winthrop Public Schools experienced an air brake failure during a test run of a Lion Electric bus, conducted without students on board. Transportation Director Josh Wheeler, who was driving, had to steer the bus into a snowbank to stop it.
It was not the first problem Winthrop had experienced with its Lion Electric buses, but it was Wheeler’s final straw.
“The safety of our students and staff are always our highest and foremost priority, and this level of risk is simply not acceptable,” Wheeler said at the time.
THE STATE’S RESPONSE

State education officials met with Lion Electric Co. for the first time in December 2023, records show, the first of several meetings that sometimes involved local school superintendents or transportation directors.
But the problems with the buses continued. State inspections found that buses in Winthrop and Vinalhaven showed wear and tear consistent with much older vehicles, not supposedly new buses.
In January 2024 Jessica Scott, the senior climate advisor to the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and Future, wrote the EPA about the Lion Electric buses, asking whether the state could put a stop on their delivery.
“I’m very concerned about additional buses that are being funded by EPA and are under order from LION for Maine schools, and whether we might be able to issue a ‘stop’ on those orders and allow schools to select another manufacturer,” Scott wrote.
Around the same time, a technician hired by Lion Electric reported a variety of problems with the buses to the Maine State Police, leading state officials to urge schools to take the buses off the road.
The technician ultimately quit after four months because, he said, the Lion Electric buses were “cobbled together” and the company failed to provide him with the correct tools.

In response to Scott’s email, the EPA said it would have Lion Electric work with Maine schools to solve the problems.
As months went on and school districts continued to report problems on a regular basis, they were given little to no information from the company.
Meanwhile, schools continued to struggle with how to handle the buses.
“We need to have an urgent discussion about taking this electric bus off the road permanently. I am deeply troubled by the safety risks it presents, and I simply cannot sleep at night knowing our students are in danger,” Mandy Belanger, superintendent of Baileyville-area schools, said in an Oct. 20, 2024, email to state education officials.
According to the terms of the Clean School Bus Program, the schools must use the electric buses or repay the roughly $400,000 grant used to purchase each one.
More than two years after the first faulty Lion Electric buses arrived in Maine, state officials are trying to find out whether that penalty will be enforced.
“The bankruptcy of Lion Electric three weeks ago definitively ends the ability of (school districts) to put these buses back on the road without absorbing a significant cost, as Lion Electric is no longer honoring its warranty,” Chloe Teboe, director of communications for the Maine Department of Education, said about Makin’s letter to the EPA. “The EPA should know that the ability of SAUs to run these buses has diminished to the point where SAUs need a waiver from the use requirement – and they also need emergency funding to acquire alternative buses and or to address service gaps.”
Meanwhile, Lion Electric Co. is no longer part of the bidding process for the state’s clean bus program.
Most recently, the Dayton School Department received $1.5 million to electrify its school bus fleet. The school district will use Thomas Built Saf-T-Liner C2 Jouley electric buses.
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