Lion Electric’s venture in Joliet is over, plant on auction block

The Lion Electric Co. is auctioning off its Joliet manufacturing plant, an unofficial acknowledgement that it will not return to the manufacturing facility that opened only two years ago with the promise of hundreds of jobs.

Workingman Capital on its website lists a May 14 auction of more than 300 assembly plant items at the Joliet plant, including paint booths, crane systems and a 40,000-pound vehicle lift.

Canada-based Lion Electric did not respond to a request for comment.

Herscher navigating changes

Herscher Community School District 2 owns 25 Lion-C electric school buses that were manufactured at the Joliet plant.

The electric buses make up half the district’s fleet.

The rural Kankakee County district is believed to have more electric school buses on the road than anywhere else in the state of Illinois after receiving a nearly $10 million grant in 2022 through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program.

Lion Electric’s company-wide layoffs announced late last year prompted concerns for the Herscher district regarding ongoing bus maintenance and servicing.

The batteries and parts on the buses came with eight-year warranties.

Superintendent Rich Decman said the district has received no further clarity from the company in recent months.

“We really have had no contact whatsoever from Lion Electric,” he said.

The district has participated in virtual meetings with the Clean School Bus Coalition to discuss issues and share resources.

From Decman’s perspective, the hope is that one of Lion Electric’s competitors will buy out its active contracts and honor warranties.

“We’re intrigued to see what happens,” Decman said. “At this point, we seem to be on our own.”

The district plans to send representatives to the Wednesday auction in Joliet to see what transpires and potentially acquire needed equipment.

“Our mechanics have been doing a wonderful job of keeping us on the road,” Decman said.

Currently, 24 of the 25 electric buses are still running daily routes, as one of the vehicles is having maintenance issues.

Lion Electric in financial trouble

The company is embroiled in deep financial troubles. It finds itself in bankruptcy, and news about Lion Electric this week centered on the refusal of the provincial government of Quebec to pour any more public money into the company after spending more than $177 million on its future.

The company’s short life in the U.S. benefited from federal government incentives aimed at moving schools and metropolitan bus systems to electric vehicles.

The auction of Joliet production equipment has not received a lot of attention.

But it does confirm the end of Lion Electric’s short-lived rejuvenation of automotive production in the Chicago area.

“They weren’t able to achieve profitability before running out of capital,” said Doug Pryor, CEO of the Will County Center for Economic Development. “It’s incredibly unfortunate.”

Pryor was among local and state officials, including Gov. JB Pritzker and U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, who attended a grand opening ceremony for the Joliet Lion Electric plant in July 2023.

They emphasized that the Lion Electric factory, located in a leased 900,000-square-foot building at 3835 Youngs Road, was the first auto assembly plant to open in the Chicago area in more than 50 years.

But layoffs started a few months later, and by December 2024, Lion Electric announced that it was suspending operations in Joliet.

The company has never defined how many people were employed in Joliet, but the number appeared to peak at 250, including temporary workers, at the time of the grand opening.

The company has not officially announced the closure of the Joliet plant, but the auctioning of its production capacity signals its end here.

Embroiled in financial problems, Lion Electric is not communicating with local officials like it once was when the company promised 1,400 manufacturing jobs in Joliet.

Joliet Economic Development Director Paulina Martinez said in an email Friday that the city has kept up communication with Lion Electric but was not informed about the upcoming auction.

“I have continued to stay in touch with them and have reached out as often as possible to maintain the relationship,” Martinez said.

Supply-chain manufacturers in the electric vehicle business have shown interest in the Joliet site, but not another vehicle manufacturer, Martinez said.

Pryor said the fate of Lion Electric was that of a startup company in a new economic sector.

He pointed to the “dot-com boom and bust” of the 1990s as a precedent for Lion Electric’s fate in the electric vehicle market.

He noted Fisker Inc., Nicola Inc. and Canoo as other startup electric vehicle companies now in bankruptcy.

“This is the nature of emerging industries,” Pryor said. “You have startups that try to compete.”