Scoop: “We no longer have a diagnostic tool to test it and the manufacturer has gone bankrupt”: Biden administration’s favorite electric buses are being sold for $5,000 to the public

"Government entities are reduced to trying to unload buses that don’t start, don’t run, and are no longer serviced, all at a massive loss to the taxpayer," we're told.

Proterra, the electric battery bus company promoted by President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and other senior Democratic officials, is seeing some of its final products sold for pennies on the dollar at an online auction.

Two electric buses made by Proterra, which filed for bankruptcy in 2023, are set for auction with starting bids of $5,000 and $5,250, respectively. But the auction listings for both, on GovDeals.com, don’t even promise working buses. The cheaper bus doesn’t turn on (“exact problem unknown,” per the listing), is “out of service due to unknown issue,” and has a mileage discrepancy of over 30,000 miles between the odometer and the recorded miles.

“We no longer have a diagnostic tool to test it and the manufacturer has gone bankrupt,” the listing adds. The vehicle also doesn’t move in forward or in reverse, and it is “unknown” if its air conditioning works at all.

Proterra’s demise, experts note, is a symptom of broader problems facing the green energy movement.

“What a fitting end to this episode,” Michael Chamberlain, the executive director of the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT), told the Reporter. “Even with all the government handouts to Proterra and its partners, the board membership for at the time soon-to-be Energy Secretary Granholm, and endorsements by President Biden, Vice President Harris and others in the administration, government entities are reduced to trying to unload buses that don’t start, don’t run, and are no longer serviced, all at a massive loss to the taxpayer.”

Chamberlain’s PPT filed ethics complaints and lawsuits regarding the Biden administration’s involvement with Proterra; he and others ultimately called for Granholm to resign due in part to her “delayed divestiture from Proterra.”

Proterra faced withering scrutiny from Republicans in Congress alongside watchdog groups like Chamberlain’s. Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) compared the company to Solyndra, the failed green energy company that received millions in taxpayer dollars from the Obama administration, and which came to embody corruption in the green energy movement.

“One of the dangers of the government picking winners and losers is that sometimes losers get gobs of taxpayer cash because they have the flashiest presentations and, more likely, the best connections,” Chamberlain told the Reporter. “This may mark the sad conclusion to another aspect of the Biden-Harris administration ‘greendoggle,’ where ethics and good stewardship are tossed aside in favor of rewarding friends and allies, but the American public is still left holding the bag.”