Updates
August 9, 2023: Just went broke.
September 3, 2021: Minnesota update here.
Original Post
Last week I posted the most under-reported story of the day: Philadelphia's Proterra fleet in complete shambles. It's an amazing story. The battery life was ridiculously short. The batteries were so heavy that the frames failed. The cost is ridiculous.
Well, someone must be reading the blog.
This past week, I think it was Friday, a reader sent me this story, again, from the Washington Free Beacon: Proterra bus fire prompts California agency to consider shelving electric bus fleet.
I can't make this stuff up.
This comes just after GM recalls (for the second time, the same) 70,000 Chevy Bolts due to fires.
But back to Proterra.
From the linked article:
- electric buses are melting in the sun;
- too-expensive-to-fix-an-electric-bus manufactured by Proterra caught fire while charging in a southern California city that is now considering taking the electric buses off the road, according to government records;
- the Foothill Transit agency, which serves the valleys surrounding Los Angeles, will decide on Friday whether costly Proterra buses purchased in the last decade are still operable. Problems cited by the agency include not only the bus that caught fire in what's described as a "thermal event," but also buses that melt in the California heat and have transmission failures. Roland Cordero, the agency's director of maintenance and vehicle technology, says the problems with the buses are exacerbated by Proterra's inability to help with repairs.
"Inability" or "unwillingness."
More:
"With the number of failures we are experiencing and the inability of Proterra to provide parts, these [Battery Electric Buses] BEBs will only get worse as we continue to operate them whenever the BEBs are available for service," Cordero wrote ahead of Friday's executive board meeting, where the agency will debate taking Proterra buses out of service.
The electric bus company, which has been hailed by the Biden administration as the future of mass transportation, has seen its stock plummet in the last month as reports pile up about problems with its product. In Philadelphia, mechanical failures and weak battery performance forced city officials to shelve buses received as recently as 2019. In Duluth, Minnesota, the buses were taken off the road because their brakes couldn't handle the city's hills. The publicly known failings of Proterra's buses have not deterred key members of the Biden administration, including the president himself, from touting the company on multiple occasions.
Proterra ticker symbol: PTRA.
On Friday, yesterday, PTRA fell another 4.46%.
One year performance:
- apparently went public in November, 2020: closed about $10.
- surged, with huge volume, mid-January, 2021: closed about $30
- by March 5, 2021: slumped to $16
- recent high: July 9, 2021 -- $17
- yesterday, July 23, 2021: $11, on a day and a week when the market surged;
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