Total raised averaged per day over approximately 16.5 years from founding to bankruptcy or shutdown. This is not measured cash burn. Methodology
Funding: Forbes / Renaissance Capital (SPAC)
Current status
Bankruptcy protection (CCAA) Dec 2024
The rise & fall
7 moments · 2008–2025
The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.
2008
🌱
2008
Founded in Quebec
Marc Bédard sets out to build electric school buses in Saint-Jérôme.
Wikipedia
2021
📈
2021
The peak: ~$4B on the SPAC wave$4B
Lists on the NYSE via Northern Genesis at the height of EV-SPAC mania.
Reuters
2022–24
2022–24
Production stalls, cash burns
EV adoption lags the plan, deliveries disappoint, and heavy losses force rounds of layoffs.
Wolf Street
2023–24
💬
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2023–24
Glassdoor reviews charted the unraveling from the plant floor: employees described leadership starting too many projects without finishing the core ones, near-yearly restructurings, and repeated layoffs that sapped morale — with reviewers near the end pointing to deepening financial instability and budget cuts.
Dec 2024
🪦
Dec 2024
Creditor protection — joins the Unitard Club 💔
Seeks CCAA protection in Canada with the shares down roughly 98% from peak.
Wolf Street
2025
2025
Quebec investors pick up the pieces
A court-approved sale hands the assets to a local investor group aiming to restart school-bus production at a smaller scale.
Reuters
$3.92Bof peak value erased · 16 years
💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.
How it happened
Lion Electric was a Canadian maker of electric school buses and trucks, valued at ~$4B after going public via SPAC in 2021. Slower-than-expected EV adoption, production and cash-flow problems, and heavy losses overwhelmed the company; it sought creditor protection under the CCAA in December 2024, with its shares collapsing roughly 98% from peak.
