California City Bought Into Electric Bus Company Promoted by White House, Now Considering Scrapping Expensive Fleet After Nonstop Disasters
One Southern California city’s test run of the Proterra electric buses touted by the Biden administration has backfired.
These buses were the “future of mass transportation,” according to Biden officials, so we can only ask: Is this the future we want?
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Foothill Transit agency, which serves valley areas outside of Los Angeles, reported that not only are the buses’ transmission failures too expensive to repair, but the buses themselves have also melted in the sweltering California heat and one even caught fire in a “thermal event” in January.
Roland Cordero, the transit agency’s director of maintenance and vehicle technology, said the buses’ problems are only exacerbated by Proterra’s inability to cooperate with its consumers, namely in supplying parts.
“With the number of failures we are experiencing and the inability of Proterra to provide parts, these [battery electric buses] will only get worse as we continue to operate them whenever the BEBs are available for service,” Cordero said.
Now the city is considering taking these buses out of service presumably in favor of something much more efficient — something powered by fossil fuels, perhaps?
That seems like the logical solution, at least.
But Proterra’s problems aren’t limited to southern California, according to the Free Beacon.
In fact, the company is floundering in light of similar dilemmas surfacing in green energy-focused areas around the country.
A WHYY-FM investigation into Philadelphia’s Proterra bus fleet found that over two dozen of the buses first supplied in 2016 have now been removed from service, according to a separate report from the Free Beacon.
And the buses’ brakes proved unable to hold up against the many hills in Duluth, Minnesota.
But the California city’s dilemma reiterates the shortcomings of these electric vehicles in their current state. Perhaps leftists are trying to move into this green energy-focused “future” faster than we safely can and their eagerness is backfiring.
A spokeswoman for Foothill Transit recaptured January’s “thermal incident” while telling the Free Beacon more about the bus dilemma, sharing that it refers to an incident in which a bus caught fire while recharging.
“The agency’s report complains that parts for the buses it purchased are ‘difficult to obtain’ and that expired warranties force the transit agency to pay tens of thousands of dollars for ‘advanced technology parts,'” the Free Beacon reported.
Some buses have even been out of service for a whopping 275 days, leaving only 15 available for use.
Is this what Biden officials want for everyone?
Unironically, however, the administration’s ties to Proterra seem a little deeper than just touting the company’s green energy focus.
In fact, Republican Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina launched an investigation into Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s Proterra connections in May, sending her office a “potential conflict of interest letter.”
So perhaps the Biden administration is focused only on its self-interests in this case — not on the best interest of the environment.
The “future of mass transportation”? Let’s hope Proterra gets its ducks in a row before that becomes the case.
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