Lion Electric wins XXL-order for electric school buses

Canada’s Lion Electric strikes again. This time close to home. The commercial vehicle maker has received an order from Autobus Séguin, a transportation operator headquartered in Quebec. They ordered 60 electric school buses to arrive over five years.

++ This article has been updated. Please continue reading below. ++

Lion Electric says this is the single most significant order to date of electric school buses in North America. They plan to deliver the first ten buses throughout 2021 and supply the remaining 50 buses through 2026, so we reckon about ten buses a year.

Autobus Séguin will integrate the new e-buses of type LionC into its existing fleet. “Ultimately, our ambition is to electrify our entire fleet of more than 310 school buses by 2030,” said Stéphane Boisvert, the Groupe’s President.

The companies also said that the Government of Quebec’s Transportation Electrification Action Plan made a “significant contribution” to this order’s fulfilment.

This is core business for Lion Electric which first made our news with school buses. Since then, they have gone from strength to strength. The most recent massive order is open with Amazon. The online retail giant plans to procure up to 2,500 all-electric trucks by 2025. The framework agreement was hidden in a long stock exchange notice.

The company announced plans of a SPAC merger with Northern Genesis Acquisition Corp last December. They expect completion this quarter which will lead to a capital influx of about 500 million dollars. Lion Electric will most likely be listed as ‘LEV’ and plans to expand manufacturing in vehicles and battery assembly.

Lion is also evaluating more than ten potential plant sites in nine states in America, including California, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. Production is then expected to start at the beginning of 2023.

On other notes of expansion, last November Lion Electric ordered $234 million worth of batteries from Romeo Power. Just a month before that, the company also entered a service partnership with charging solution giant ABB.

Update 21 November 2021

Lion Electric has received another order from Autobus Séguin, following the acquisition of 60 electric school buses in January this year. The new contract asks for 55 electric school buses, including 45 LionA and 10 LionC models, to be delivered by 2025.

The order, however, hinges upon the satisfactory grant of funding under the Quebec government’s School Transportation Electrification Program and the Canadian federal government’s Zero Emission Transit Fund (ZETF).

Of the 60 vehicles that Autobus Séguin acquired, as mentioned above, ten are already on the road. The new buses will be used on school routes in the Montréal and Laval regions in Québec.

Once both orders are complete, the 115 e-buses will make up about a third of the fleet of Autobus Séguin that counts 310 vehicles in total. As reported above, Autobus Séguin aims to electrify all vehicles by 2030.

prnewswire.com, thelionelectric.com (update Nov ’21)