Quebec proudly poured $177 million of taxpayers’ money into Lion Electric — the Saint-Jérôme “green champion” that was supposed to lead the province into a glorious electric future. By December 2024, the company had collapsed, caught fire (literally), and was sold off for a humiliating $6 million. Quebec got back pennies on the dollar for its grand investment in “sustainable transportation.” That was already embarrassing.

What happens when you actually put these glorified golf carts on real Quebec roads is pure comedy.

What Actually Happens When You Drive One

Montreal. A perfectly ordinary school route. A standard Lion electric bus.

One completely normal Montreal pothole. The bus doesn’t slow down. It doesn’t shudder.

It just dies. Motor cuts out completely. Dead in the water.

A pothole. In Montreal. On a residential street the bus was specifically bought and subsidized to serve.

This is the same legendary Montreal road network that turns every winter into a war zone and creates hundreds of thousands of hours of traffic misery every year. And yet the province somehow expected these delicate electric princesses to survive it. They don’t.

The Design That Punishes Basic Competence

The transmission on these buses carries a polite little warning: “Please don’t shift directly from Drive to Reverse without going through Neutral.” There is no mechanical lockout. No safety interlock. Just a friendly suggestion on a screen.

In other words, the bus is perfectly happy to let any driver — especially a tired, rushed, or new one navigating Montreal traffic with screaming kids in the back — destroy the transmission with a single careless move. A properly engineered vehicle prevents stupid mistakes. Quebec’s “green future” vehicle relies on hope and a warning label.

Brilliant. And it gets better. For certain resets, drivers must manually shut down the 400-volt battery system.

This charming procedure requires two separate shutoffs: one inside the cabin, one through a tiny door on the driver’s side exterior. New drivers get a paper route sheet and a pat on the back. That’s it.

No serious hands-on training for handling high-voltage systems. Just “good luck, don’t electrocute the children or yourself.” Quebec handed 400-volt death machines to people who were barely briefed, then sent them out onto pothole-riddled streets with actual school kids aboard. What could possibly go wrong?

The Suspension That Exposes Everything

The suspension is so stiff and unforgiving that every single pothole, road joint, and crumbling patch of Montreal asphalt is transmitted straight through the floor and into the spines of every passenger. Special Olympics athletes. Small children.

Kids with sensory issues. They don’t get cushioned. They get a front-row seat to the true condition of Quebec’s infrastructure — delivered in violent, bone-rattling detail.

A school bus suspension is supposed to protect passengers from bad roads. This one acts like an angry engineer filing a complaint.

The Full Picture of Provincial Delusion

Quebec spent $177 million subsidizing buses that can’t handle Quebec roads. Quebec’s own rotten infrastructure disables the buses it forced onto its streets. Quebec’s half-assed driver training throws new operators into 400-volt systems with nothing but a piece of paper for guidance.

The entire electric bus subsidy program was designed to buy shiny green toys while ignoring the basic reality of the province: terrible roads, harsh winters, and drivers who need vehicles that are actually usable, not delicate ideological statements. The result? Every school morning, on ordinary Montreal routes, you can witness the farce: A bus too big and fragile for the narrow, broken streets A suspension that broadcasts every failure of provincial maintenance A transmission that begs drivers not to break it (but lets them anyway) New drivers managing high-voltage batteries like it’s a casual Tuesday All of it proudly branded as Quebec’s bold leap into the electric, carbon-free future.

The driver sitting there with a dead bus, dead motor, and living children on board has a much clearer view of reality. What Would Actually Help (But Quebec Will Never Do) Transmission systems with actual mechanical safeguards instead of polite warnings Real, demonstrated competency training on 400-volt systems before letting anyone drive alone Suspensions engineered for actual Montreal roads, not some imaginary smooth European fantasy Serious investment in fixing the crumbling infrastructure that’s eating these expensive toys alive None of this requires rocket science. It only requires something Quebec’s political and bureaucratic class seems incapable of: basic honesty and competence.

The buses exist. The disastrous roads exist. The undertrained drivers exist.

The embarrassing excuses exist. And the $177 million? Mostly gone.

Welcome to Quebec’s green transportation revolution. It’s not electric. It’s just humiliating.