Electric buses purchased from bankrupt company no longer running
Jenny Goldsberry
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Jackson, Wyoming, has put its fleet of eight electric buses out of commission indefinitely.
Proterra, one of the nation’s largest electric bus manufacturers and supplier of Jackson’s newest buses, filed for bankruptcy last month. Its CEO, Gareth Joyceth, claimed “various market and macroeconomic headwinds” caused the company to fail and also resulted in a loss of $250 million in the first quarter of 2023.
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Now all eight buses need repairs. In their place, Southern Teton Area Rapid Transit will deploy six new diesel buses to the area as soon as October. This is seemingly a step away from the department’s goal of alternating to 40% electric power, although the company that sold START 11 diesel buses this year, Gillig, also manufactures electric buses, which could be the state’s next investment.
Wyoming first received a Low- and No-Emission Grant Award from the Federal Transit Administration in 2018, when START received $2.29 million toward its “purchase electric vehicles and charging station equipment.” FTA awarded $84.45 million nationwide that year.
In 2023, $1.7 billion was allocated to this program via President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure plan passed in 2021. It was specifically meant to go toward 1,700 American-built buses, and Wyoming received $945,178 to “buy zero-emission battery-electric buses and charging equipment to replace diesel buses that serve nearly half a million visitors and workers in and around Teton Village and resorts.”
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Proterra’s reported loss in 2023 was five times over its loss in 2022. The company would also subsequently lay off 300 staff in January.
Biden has all but endorsed Proterra in the past, at one point taking a virtual tour of a Proterra manufacturing facility in South Carolina in 2021, where he revealed he used to be a bus driver. That year START was awarded $1.1 million, which it used to add to its electric bus fleet.