'It takes a lot longer than expected, a lot longer' — Lion Electric's EV dream hits a bump in the road

financialpost.com:

From its very first earnings calls after going public in 2021, Lion Electric Co. has boasted that big-name companies, such as Amazon.com Inc., Ikea Systems BV, Canadian National Railway Co. and others, wanted its zero-emission electric trucks.

Those household-name clients helped build a wave of investor excitement that St. Jerome, Que.-based Lion Electric would have a first-mover advantage in the electric-truck market. But three years later, chief executive Marc Bedard admits the company’s dream of selling thousands of all-electric trucks hasn’t taken shape as quickly as expected.

“We were expecting that it could take a little bit of time,” he said. “To be honest, it takes a lot longer than expected, a lot longer.”

The situation provides a window into what’s happening with electric vehicles more broadly as governments implement green-transition policies and incentives. Transportation accounts for about 21 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, and emissions from freight movement have been increasing.

Lion Electric is targeting the urban medium- and heavy-duty market rather than long-haul trucking. Bedard has said the current technology is more suitable for urban delivery, and yet the company is still having trouble selling its trucks.

For now, that means Canada’s largest homegrown all-electric vehicle manufacturer is focused on the original market it targeted: the far smaller all-electric school bus market, which is about a tenth of the size of the truck market.

Nonetheless, supportive government policies in both the United States and Canada have driven sales of school buses for Lion, which has been a blessing and a curse.

The company estimates that between half and two-thirds of the 1,800 school bus orders on