The Biden Administration and the global warming climate change activists want to force all new vehicles sold in the United States to be zero-emission come 2035, because they believe that our personal choices don’t matter, but even now they are pushing plug-in electrics, seemingly unconcerned with the possible drawbacks. From Fox Business:

Electric buses are sitting unused in cities across the US; here’s why

Cities coast-to-coast grappling with broken-down e-buses that cannot be fixed

by Breck Dumas | Monday, January 29, 2024 | 8:00 AM EST

Between the federal government, states and municipalities, untold billions in taxpayer dollars have been spent adding electric buses to transit fleets across the U.S. in an effort to reduce carbon emissions.

However, cities from coast-to-coast are grappling with broken-down e-buses that cannot be fixed, are too expensive to fix, or they have scrapped their electric fleets altogether.

I did snag an image from the article, which amusingly tells us that the zero emissions are “Clearly Better,” which I suppose is true . . . because buses sitting parked truly are zero emission!

Officials in Asheville, North Carolina, recently expressed frustration that three of the five e-buses the city purchased for millions in 2018 are now sitting idle due to a combination of software issues, mechanical problems and an inability to obtain replacement parts.

Earlier this month, The Denver Gazette reported two of the four e-buses Colorado Springs’ Mountain Metropolitan Transit acquired in 2021 are not running. They cost $1.2 million a piece, mostly paid for by government grants.

Part of the problem is the manufacturer of the buses, Proterra, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August. The company, founded in 2004, rose to become the largest e-bus company in the U.S., representing nearly 40% of the market prior to going belly-up.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm sat on Proterra’s board until she joined the Biden administration, and President Biden touted the company while taking a virtual tour of the manufacturer in the spring of 2021. Granholm made $1.6 million selling her stock in the company shortly after that, following criticisms that her holdings in the firm were a conflict of interest.

I’m shocked, shocked! that the Secretary of Energy, who has influence in deciding where the grants to buy these silly things, once sat on the Board of Directors of one of the companies that manufactured the electric buses.

As we previously reported, a Proterra bus, which had been out of service for two years, spontaneously caught fire in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority’s South Philadelphia Depot. Here is the money line:

The transit agency bought 25 battery-electric buses from California manufacturer Proterra in 2016, but all have been parked at the depot since 2020 after discovery of cracks in bus frames and performance problems.

That third quoted paragraph is the money line: all 25 Proterra buses have been parked since 2020, because they were pieces of feces had problems. A SEPTA spokesman confirmed that the fire’s origin was traced to lithium ion battery units inside the bus.

Although the buses cost about $1 million each, several times more than diesel or hybrid counterparts, they have been pitched as an alternative that requires less fixed infrastructure than traditional trolleys or trackless trolley buses.

Apparently the only fixed infrastructure that SEPTA’s Proterra buses need is the parking lot on which they are sitting, unused.

The Fox Business original detailed other municipal transit agencies which have parked some of all of their electric bus fleets.

It’s January, the depths of winter in the northern hemisphere, and surprise, surprise, electric buses in Chicago, Iowa City, and Oslo are seeing serious range reductions in the cold weather, because that’s simply normal: batteries just don’t have the same efficiency when they get cold. From the Chicago link:

Yet to make electric buses work, the CTA has had to go to great lengths and expense. It built fast-charging sites on both ends of the No. 66 route that plug into the bus rooftops.

Drivers constantly monitor the batteries to make sure they don’t get depleted, risking the bus getting stranded. If they get below 50% charge, they’re supposed to top them off at a charger.

“We’re working through the day-to-day challenges of inclement weather in Chicago,” said Don Hargrove, senior maintenance manager at the garage that’s home to most of the authority’s 23 electric buses.

In other words, Chicago had to build an additional charging facility, and is using much more electricity to charge the buses, because the cold batteries cannot absorb, store, and release an electric charge as efficiently. There is a two word description for this, the first word of which is “cluster.”