Liquidation likely for Lion Electric
A court-appointed administrator said that the company will very likely be liquidated following the provincial government’s refusal to invest further public money into the company, which would have been a condition of any sale of the struggling company. Jean-François Nadon, a restructuring specialist with Deloitte, said “the likelihood of a liquidation of assets is very high”, and described the Quebec government’s decision as a ‘shock wave’ for Lion Electric.
The regional government has already invested heavily in the company, with Premier François Legault stating that the province could lose around $140 million CAD on the company. Legault has previously stated that Quebec may relax its targets for electric vehicles as the US is no longer “making this a priority” – something Nadon also believes has motivated the govenrment’s decision to pull the plug on further funding. Citing the ‘sociopolitical situation’ in the US, Nadon said the expansion of Lion’s business plan has been severely limited and created “extremely significant risks” for the company.
Founded in 2011 in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, Lion Electric underwent rapid early expansion – opening a manufacturing facility in Illinois, US, and securing substantial public investments. There are around 1,175 of its school buses on the road in Quebec, and it also had some success with its commercial LionTruck series. Despite this, the company faced production delays, falling revenues, and mounting debts. For example, in 2024, Lion’s revenue dropped to $30.6m CAD from $80.3m CAD the previous year, and delivered only 89 vehicles compared to 245 in Q3 of 2023.
This led them to file creditor protection in Canada and Chapter 15 bankruptcy in the US in late 2024, with several rounds of redundancy last year. Nadon’s Deloitte restructuring team came up with a plan to refocus operations on electric school buses and reconsolidate production to Quebec, which would have required $20-24m CAD from the provincial government. Since the Quebec government announced it wouldn’t save the company, Lion has laid off all but 12 of its employees and says it is unable to pay rent for all of its locations. With no buyers on the horizon, it looks as if it may now be curtains for the business – unless something radical happens.
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