A new Microsoft artificial intelligence lab on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus could help 270 Wisconsin businesses by the end of the decade.
The post Microsoft opens AI Co-Innovation Lab at UW-Milwaukee appeared first on WPR.
GOSHEN, Ind. — Forest River Bus & Van, a division of Forest River, Inc., is proud to
announce a series of leadership advancements aimed at strengthening operations,
enhancing the customer experience, and supporting long-term growth.
Forest River has named Douglas Wright as President of its Bus, Van, and Marine divisions. With more than three decades of experience in the automotive industry, Wright is known for his strategic leadership, operational expertise, and commitment to customer service.
“This company was built by people who care deeply about what they do—and who they do it for,” Wright said. “Our responsibility now is to carry that legacy forward while continuing to refine and elevate the customer journey.
Supporting that vision is longtime Forest River leader Mike Terlep, newly appointed as Director of Sales for the Bus division. Terlep will lead all sales efforts across government, commercial, and dealer channels in North America. With a strong foundation in both RV and commercial transportation, he brings decades of hands-on experience and a reputation for being dependable and dealer focused.
“There’s no substitute for consistency and follow-through,” Terlep said. “We’ve built a strong foundation, and I’m excited to help carry that forward, ensuring every agency, fleet, and dealer experiences the strength of our commitment.”
But this expansion goes beyond titles. It’s about reimagining what service looks like at every step from initial order to years after delivery. To do that, Forest River has introduced two new roles focused on aligning the ownership experience with the operational precision behind each build.
• Ryan Lamb has been named Director of Customer Experience, leading efforts to
bring greater continuity, speed, and clarity to every customer touchpoint. With
nearly two decades in commercial vehicle manufacturing, Lamb understands how
critical it is to get things right the first time and keep them running right long after.
• On the dealer side, Matt Steele has been named Director of Dealer Experience. With a background in product development, dealer operations, and customer service, Steele’s mission is to make it easier than ever for Forest River’s network of dealers to succeed.
Together, these leadership moves reinforce what has always set Forest River apart: its people, its partnerships, and its purpose.
The post Forest River Bus & Van Expands Leadership to Drive Operational Excellence and Customer Support Nationwide appeared first on School Transportation News.
As part of the expansion, Yaskawa America Inc. will begin manufacturing robots in Franklin.
The post Robotics manufacturer moving North American headquarters from Illinois to Wisconsin appeared first on WPR.
Amid a stunning financial turnaround over the found its leader to succeed Phil Horlock as both president and CEO. Personal reasons forced Blue Bird to go in a different direction last fall after Britton Smith unceremoniously resigned. But the company didn’t have to look far for the best candidate to step up and into the position.
Wyskiel had spent the previous two decades leading Magna International, the last five years as global president of the manufacturer’s seating division. But he knows school buses intimately. He came to Magna over 15 years ago from Canadian Blue Bird Coach, where he was general manager of Type A and Type C school bus body and assembly production.
“John’s deep and varied expertise in operational excellence and manufacturing leadership makes him an ideal fit for this role at this time,” Doug Grimm, chairman of Blue Bird, said when Wyskiel’s name was announced in January. “His proven track record will be invaluable as we expand our footprint and improve our operational processes to support our customers.”
School Transportation News caught up with Wyskiel shortly after he started on Feb. 17 to discuss the company’s evolution as it prepares to celebrate its 100th birthday in 2027, the same year the industry is poised to meet the latest federal emissions standards that were still under review by the new Trump administration EPA. Editor’s note Wyskiel declined to comment on tariff impacts, referring instead to a previous statement made by Horlock in January that Blue Bird would pass along any additional manufacturing costs to customers.
STN: How has Blue Bird changed since you were last mpart of the company 20 years ago?
Wyskiel: Of course, the company is publicly traded today, and it has been successful financially. However, at its core, the DNA of this century-old American company has not changed. There is a strong sense of pride within Blue Bird reflecting a company culture that deeply cares about people. The talent within the company has continued to expand over the years in all functional areas. Operationally, you can see a much greater focus on metrics and key performance indicators, which has enabled Blue Bird to become very focused and to make data-based decisions. From a product perspective, our rich history of innovations [are] on full display, particularly around alternative powertrain offerings. All of these developments have turned Blue Bird into a high performance business and strengthened its iconic brand.
STN: How would you describe your leadership style? What is your strategic vision for Blue Bird?
Wyskiel: I am a pretty engaged operator, and I believe people work best in an environment which fosters empowerment and accountability. Plus, when there is an issue, there is no substitute for “go see.” Whether it’s on the shop floor, at a dealer or at a customer, there is no substitution. I have returned to Blue Bird after a 20-year hiatus only a few weeks ago [at interview time]. Therefore, it’s a little early to talk strategy in specifics just yet. But I think the theme will be to shift to a long-term view for our customers, dealers, team members and investors. This means investing in facilities, our products and expanding into adjacent markets where we can. This great company has been around for almost 100 years, and my objective is to set it up for success for decades to come.
STN: Blue Bird currently offers more fuel choices than any other school bus manufacturer. Why is this important especially in the current political environment?
Wyskiel: Blue Bird offers the widest powertrain portfolio in the markets diesel, gasoline, propane and, of course, electric. We believe there is no one answer for customers. They want choice for their districts. A broad product portfolio allows them to tailor the value proposition to their specific needs. It could be total cost of operation, overall durability, ease of refueling, or the advantages of zero emissions. And if you look at the current political environment, it is just a benefit to have the widest offering as we cover every area in the market regardless of where legislation ends up. Blue Bird undoubtedly has the broadest offering, our success in the marketplace validates our strategy.
Moving forward, I do hope to see a more predictable regulatory environment for our industry. Manufacturers need to plan years in advance and commit to product development and investment. So, directional stability is not simply helpful, it is essential. I think the move to zero emissions will continue to advance longer term, it just may take longer to get there. In the school bus market, it makes so much sense. The duty cycle fits electrification and charging, range is not an issue since school district routes are normally shorter, and zero emissions advances student health and performance.
STN: What is Blue Bird doing to strengthen the long-term health of the EPA’s Clean School Bus Program?
Wyskiel: The 2022 Clean School Bus Rebate Program is part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provides a total of $5 billion over five years for clean school bus transportation. To date, the EPA has awarded almost $3 billion to fund approximately 9,000 school bus replacements, approximately 95 percent of which are zero-emission, battery-electric. Funding has been awarded to more than 1,300 school districts in nearly all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
There is no question the program had an overwhelmingly positive impact on children, communities and American manufacturing, bringing invaluable opportunities to school districts to transition their fleets to zero-emission school buses. Communities across the country have benefited from the reduction in diesel tailpipe emissions that can negatively impact student and community health. As the leader in low- and zero-emission school buses, we have communicated and promoted the benefit at all levels of government.
STN: Can you update us on the status of standard lap/shoulder seatbelts and other safety technology like driver airbags?
Wyskiel: Blue Bird is recognized as a technology leader and innovator of school buses since its founding in 1927. Our dedicated team designs and manufactures school buses with a singular focus on safety, reliability and durability. School buses carry the most precious cargo in the world, 25 million children twice a day, making them the most trusted mode of student transportation.
Blue Bird made lap/shoulder belts standard on its buses late last year and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Similarly, we will introduce airbags protecting drivers this fall. It’s a testimony to Blue Bird, whose school buses are designed, not adapted to the market, and whose focus on safety has been industry leading. If you could fast forward a decade, we will probably look back and wonder how school transportation didn’t include seatbelts and airbags all along. I am proud that Blue Bird has taken the lead role in this area.
STN: Thank you.
Editor’s Note: As reprinted in the May 2025 issue of School Transportation News.
Related: (STN Podcast E259) Feel the Passion: Debates on Wi-Fi, Technology, Alternative Transportation & Safety
Related: Blue Bird Showcases Zero- and Low-Emission Commercial Vehicle Platforms at 2025 Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo
Related: Q&A: Back to School with New NAPT Executive Director McGee-Hewitt
Related: (STN Podcast E212) On the Horizon: Technology Showcases & Clean Bus Discussions at ACT Expo
The post Wyskiel Steers Blue Bird Toward its Second Century appeared first on School Transportation News.
A worker installs a solar panel on a roof. (Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Clean energy manufacturers and advocates say they’re perplexed how the repeal of tax credits in President Donald Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” will keep their domestic production lines humming across the United States, particularly in states that elected him to the Oval Office.
While some Republicans have labeled the billions in tax credits a “green new scam,” statistics reviewed by States Newsroom show the jobs and benefits would boost predominantly GOP-leaning states and congressional districts. Now the industry is already slowing amid Trump’s back-and-forth tariff policy and mixed messaging on energy and manufacturing.
Trump vowed in early April that he would “supercharge our domestic industrial base.”
“Jobs and factories will come roaring back to our country, and you see it happening already,” he told a crowd in the White House Rose Garden while unveiling his new trade policy.
But as a way to pay for the $3.9 trillion price tag of extending and expanding the 2017 corporate and individual tax cuts, U.S. House Republicans found billions of dollars in savings by slashing over a dozen clean energy tax credits enacted in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act under President Joe Biden.
Critics say the mega-bill, which passed the GOP-led House on May 22 in a 215-214 vote, would effectively strip away the Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit and other incentives.
They have bolstered the production of batteries and solar components in numerous states — top among them North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, South Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Texas, Nevada, Illinois and Oklahoma, according to the Clean Investment Monitor, a joint project by the Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.
U.S. senators are now negotiating the massive budget reconciliation legislation.
Kevin Doffling, CEO and founder of Project Vanguard, an organization that connects veterans to clean energy jobs, warned pulling the plug on the clean energy tax credits will stifle progress the U.S. has made against other countries, namely China.
“We’re just going to see a huge pullback from investments inside of advanced manufacturing here in the U.S., and then we’ll go source it from other places, instead of doing it here,” Doffling said on a May 28 press call pressing for senators to protect the tax credits.
Doffling’s organization works in several states, including Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Minnesota, Washington and Utah.
The suite of tax credits enacted under the IRA incentivized homeowners, car buyers, energy producers and manufacturers to invest in types of energy beyond fossil fuels, with the aim of a reduction in the effects of climate change.
For example, the IRA’s Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit is awarded per unit produced and sold, and in some cases the capacity of energy output.
Battery cell manufacturers can earn up to $35 per battery cell multiplied by potential kilowatt hours. In the case of solar, the credit offers producers 7 cents per solar module multiplied by wattage output. For mining operations extracting critical minerals, such as lithium, companies can receive a 10% tax break on the costs of production.
Most credits phase out by 2032 under the Biden-era law, except those for critical mineral mining, which continue.
A group of House Republicans, who have dubbed the tax credits the “green new scam” — echoing Trump’s rhetoric — pushed to accelerate the expiration in the final version of the mega-bill, even for critical mineral mining and production. The federal government classifies critical minerals as crucial to national security.
The House-passed bill also severely tightens language around foreign components, titled “foreign entities of concern,” making the credit practically unusable as many parts of the clean energy manufacturing supply chain are global, industry professionals say.
The legislation also repeals “transferability,” which allows companies with little or no tax liability to sell the credits.
For example, a critical mineral mining company would not turn a profit during an initial phase and could sell the credits to offset the cost of operations.
Schneider Electric, a global corporation with a U.S. base in Massachusetts, has facilitated 18 transfer deals worth $1.7 billion in tax credits for U.S. companies since 2023. In a statement, Schneider said the deals “reflect growing market interest in flexible financing mechanisms that directly fund renewable projects.”
Silfab Solar, which recently built a solar cell manufacturing and module assembly plant in Fort Mill, South Carolina, announced in mid-May the sale of $110 million in Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credits to help fund its expansion. The company already runs a solar manufacturing site in Burlington, Washington.
Spurred by the Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit, known as 45X, actual investment in clean energy manufacturing since August 2022 reached $115 billion in April, up from $21 billion over the same length of time prior to the IRA, the Clean Investment Monitor found.
Of the 380 clean technology production facilities announced since the third quarter of 2022, 161 are now operational, according to CIM data.
The credit spurred a “sea change” in U.S. clean energy manufacturing, said Mike Williams, senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress and former deputy director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which advocates for the joining of labor and environmental organizations.
Despite solar technology’s roots in the U.S., the nation “didn’t even have a toe” in solar manufacturing, Williams said. Other countries, most notably Germany and then China, have dominated the industry.
“But after the Inflation Reduction Act passed, all of a sudden we see panel manufacturing, we see parts and components manufacturing, absolutely exploding. Plants have announced and started construction in Georgia, in Oklahoma,” Williams said in an interview with States Newsroom.
Active manufacturing of solar components, advanced batteries and wind turbines and vessels is concentrated in rural areas. Most are located in states that went red in the 2024 presidential election, according to the Clean Power America Association’s May 2025 State of Clean Energy Manufacturing in America report.
The renewable energy policy group estimated the industry supports 122,000 full-time manufacturing jobs across the U.S.
Active solar manufacturing sites and expansions are clustered in Texas, Ohio and Alabama, according to data from the association. Should major project announcements in Georgia pull through, the state would surpass Alabama for third place.
Advanced battery manufacturing spans 38 states, with the largest concentrations in California, Michigan and North Carolina.
But various parts of the battery production process stretch throughout the country — for example, battery cell production in Nevada and Tennessee and module production in Utah. Other supporting hardware is made in South Carolina, Arizona and Texas.
Lithium, a critical mineral for battery production, is currently mined in Nevada and California. And investors are eyeing other spots in the U.S., namely Alaska, to mine and produce graphite, another critical mineral.
China largely dominates the world’s critical mineral supply chain, according to U.S. Geological Survey data for 2024.
When accounting for the full suite of clean energy tax credits that were enacted in 2022 — including residential, electric vehicles and clean electricity credits — just over 312,900 new jobs are linked to the industry, the bulk in Republican-led congressional districts, according to the advocacy group Climate Power’s 2024 report on clean energy employment.
Troy Van Beek, CEO and founder of the Iowa-based solar company Ideal Energy, said his business weathered the pandemic and has been able to add jobs, but is now facing uncertainty again.
“We’re getting our feet under us and really starting to operate. I went from 20-some jobs to over 60 jobs, and those are good-paying jobs for people and their families. So we need that stability in the industry,” said Van Beek, who spoke on the call with Doffling.
“What troubles me is the rocking of the boat to such a degree that we can’t get anything done, and that’s been very difficult to deal with,” he said.
The industry has seen a pullback since January and the beginning of the Trump presidency.
Six announced projects representing $6.9 billion in investment were canceled in the first quarter of 2025, according to the Clean Investment Monitor’s latest State of U.S. Clean Energy Supply Chains report. While investment in clean energy overall continues to grow, the beginning of 2025 shows a slowdown from where the industry was a year ago.
Van Beek, whose solar company provides construction and installation among others services, said recent talks to strike a deal with a solar manufacturer collapsed after threats to the tax credits.
“We had worked an entire year on putting together (a deal) with one of the leading manufacturers in the world that has U.S. manufacturing to actually have joint ventures and work with them on projects,” Van Beek said. “And when this came up, that deal came to a screeching halt.”
Van Beek did not name the company on the call and did not respond to a request for a follow-up interview.
Several companies declined States Newsroom’s requests for comment while senators negotiate the bill.
Spencer Pederson of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association said the unpredictability is interrupting how operators are planning for the coming years.
“Whether large or small, just the business certainty and the ability to plan out your business is disrupted when you have any type of tax mechanism that is abruptly halted when you’re doing business planning at five- or 10-year intervals,” said Pederson, the association’s senior vice president of public affairs.
Some House Republicans, led by Rep. Jen Kiggans of Virginia, urged party colleagues to protect the clean energy tax credits — for example by removing the “overly prescriptive” restrictions on foreign entities of concern and keeping in place transferability of tax credits.
Kiggans wrote to House Republican tax writers in mid-May that “the last thing any of us want is to provoke an energy crisis or cause higher energy bills for working families.”
Her co-signers included Don Bacon of Nebraska, Mark Amodei of Nevada, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, Gabe Evans and Jeff Hurd of Colorado, Dave Joyce of Ohio and Dan Newhouse of Washington, who all eventually voted for the final bill.
Far-right House members won on not only shortening the lifespan of the credits, but also on keeping the restrictive foreign entity language and on repealing a company’s ability to transfer credits.
The right-leaning National Taxpayers Union hailed the “commonsense changes” championed by the far-right House Freedom Caucus, under the leadership of Maryland Rep. Andy Harris.
The organization, which favors cutting government spending and lowering taxes, pointed to the cost. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the credits as of 2022 were valued at roughly $384.9 billion over ten years.
“The longer these subsidies remain in law, the more expensive they will become and the harder it will be for Congress to remove them. Now it’s up to the Senate to support the Green New Deal Rollbacks,” Thomas Aiello, NTU’s senior director of government affairs, wrote in the days following the House vote.
But representatives from multinational corporations to mid-size businesses and sizable trade associations are now looking to the U.S. Senate to restore measures that they say created a boom time for investment, production and new energy on the grid.
Jeannie Salo, chief public policy officer at Schneider Electric, said in a statement to States Newsroom that “The Senate should restore and extend the timelines for key energy and manufacturing credits and their transferability to ensure the nation continues to attract key investments and projects that will power the U.S. economy and help make energy more affordable.”
Pederson said the restrictions on foreign components and company ties are “particularly restrictive coming out of the House.”
“So we’re hoping to work with the Senate Finance Committee and some of the members of the Senate who have indicated some willingness to make the foreign entity of concern language a little bit more workable,” Pederson said.
Doffling believes senators have a “longer term vision” of the nation’s energy strategy than House members who face reelection every two years.
“They see what’s happening not just in their district, but in the entire state that they represent,” Doffling said.
The House bill just sets the U.S. “further behind,” he added. “This bill is all about going backwards in time and hoping for the best.”
“I wish they could look at the numbers and understand the economic impacts it’s gonna have. … But somehow we’re talking about the fact of hamstringing a whole entire industry itself over verbiage of the word ‘clean.’”
In recent years, Wisconsin high schools have seen a steady increase in enrollment in hands-on technical education courses. It’s a change, after years of declining enrollment nationwide in the 1990s and 2000s.
The post Wisconsin shop teachers overhaul curriculums, encourage students to consider trades appeared first on WPR.
HIGH POINT, N.C. – Thomas Built Buses (TBB), a leading manufacturer of school buses in North America, recognized Kerlin Bus Sales & Leasing, Inc. as its 2024 Dealer of the Year. The distinction celebrates Kerlin’s exceptional customer support, industry leadership and ongoing commitment to student transportation.
Based in Silver Lake, Indiana, Kerlin has been a Thomas Built Buses dealer for over 60 years. This marks the dealership’s fourth Dealer of the Year honor, with prior recognition in 1995, 2008 and 2021.
“Kerlin has been an integral part of Thomas Built for decades and has successfully passed the legacy from one generation to the next,” said Daoud Chaaya, vice president of sales, aftermarket and marketing for Thomas Built Buses. “The entire team at Kerlin consistently raises the bar on excellence through their unwavering commitment to the overall TBB value proposition and exceptional customer experience. Congratulations to Kerlin Bus Sales and Leasing on being named the 2024 Dealer of the Year.”
In addition to the Dealer of the Year award, Kerlin was also named to the Thomas Built Buses President’s Club, President’s Club Platinum and Honors Class, which recognizes the top seven dealers for overall performance. The dealership remains a trusted advisor to schools throughout Indiana and beyond, providing expert guidance and service for diesel and electric bus fleets.
Each year, Thomas Built Buses evaluates dealers across its network based on key performance metrics, including customer service, parts availability, training participation and sales performance. The Dealer of the Year award represents the highest level of achievement among all TBB dealers in North America.
2024 Honors Class:
H.A. DeHart & Son, Inc. – Thorofare, New Jersey
Interstate Transportation Equipment, Inc. – Columbia, South Carolina
Kerlin Bus Sales & Leasing, Inc. – Silver Lake, Indiana
Matthews Bus Alliance, Inc. – Orlando, Florida
Mid-South Bus Center, Inc. – Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Midwest Bus Sales, Inc. – Litchfield, Illinois
New England Transit Sales, Inc. – Tyngsboro, Massachusetts
2024 President’s Club Platinum:
Carolina Thomas, LLC – Greensboro, North Carolina
H.A. DeHart & Son, Inc. – Thorofare, New Jersey
Hoekstra Transportation, Inc. – Grand Rapids, Michigan
Interstate Transportation Equipment, Inc. – Columbia, South Carolina
Kerlin Bus Sales & Leasing, Inc. – Silver Lake, Indiana
Matthews Buses, Inc. – Ballston Spa, New York
Matthews Bus Alliance, Inc. – Orlando, Florida
Mid-South Bus Center, Inc. – Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Midwest Bus Sales, Inc. – Litchfield, Illinois
Midwest Bus Sales, Inc. – Shawnee, Kansas
New England Transit Sales, Inc. – Tyngsboro, Massachusetts
Rohrer Bus Sales – Duncannon, Pennsylvania
Sonny Merryman, Inc. – Evington, Virginia
Thomas Bus Sales of Georgia – Forest Park, Georgia
Thomas Bus Texas – Dallas, Texas
2024 President’s Club:
American Bus Sales & Service – Annapolis, Maryland
BusWest – Carson, California
Complete Bus and Specialty Vehicles – Clarksburg, Ohio
Empire Truck Sales, LLC – Richland, Mississippi
Midwest Bus Sales, Inc. – Commerce City, Colorado
Midwest Bus Sales, Inc. – El Reno, Oklahoma
Myers Equipment Corporation – Canfield, Ohio
Schetky Northwest Sales, Inc. – Portland, Oregon
Transportation South, Inc. – Pelham, Alabama
W.C. Cressey & Son, Inc. – Kennebunk, Maine
About Thomas Built Buses:
Founded in 1916, Thomas Built Buses is a leading manufacturer of school buses in North America. Since the first Thomas Built bus rolled off the assembly line, the company has been committed to delivering the smartest and most innovative buses in North America. Learn more at thomasbuiltbuses.com or facebook.com/thomasbuiltbuses.
Thomas Built Buses, Inc., headquartered in High Point, North Carolina, is a subsidiary of Daimler Truck North America LLC, a leading provider of comprehensive products and technologies for the commercial transportation industry. The company designs, engineers, manufactures and markets medium and heavy-duty trucks, school buses, vehicle chassis and their associated technologies and components under the Freightliner, Western Star, Thomas Built Buses, Freightliner Custom Chassis Corp and Detroit brands. Daimler Truck North America is a subsidiary of Daimler Truck, one of the world’s leading commercial vehicle manufacturers.
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ANAHIEM, Calif. — “It’s an honor to kick off ACT Expo 2025,” said Jennifer Rumsey, chair and chief executive officer of Cummins. “We’re in a very different place than we were just a year ago. We always knew the energy transition was going to be dynamic, and it’s clear now it’s going to be even more dynamic, more uncertain, more divergent than we ever thought it would be.”
Rumsey, who has spent the last 25 years at Cummins first as a mechanical engineer and later as an executive, noted in her opening general session April 28 that regulations were driving the industry toward a net-zero future. Cummins, like most large OEMs, was investing a record amount of money to meet those goals. Yet, concerns regarding infrastructure investment to support the emerging technology also existed.
She said the trucking and bus industry is just now starting to understand how the Trump administration’s policies might impact the future.
“There’s proposals to reconsider or reevaluate EPA regulations and natural uncertainty as this process takes shape, the incentives for battery electric vehicles offered through the IRA used onshore manufacturing and help drive adoption are back on the negotiating table, and tariffs are being used as trade policies and also impacting our businesses,” Rumsey explained. “So, what does this mean for us today? It means there’s more uncertainty than ever before about the role regulations, incentives and trade policies will play for the future of our industry.”
She commented that despite a potential rollback of regulations, Cummins is continuing to invest billions of dollars to innovate and develop cleaner, more advanced and efficient technologies. “I’ve seen us over the last several decades, we’ve made real progress, real impact together,” she said, adding that even in terms of diesel engines, the industry has significantly reduced emissions and improved fuel efficiency.
She noted that “advancements in fuel injection systems, turbo chargers, after treatment and controls, have reduced NOx and particulate emissions by more than 98 percent in the U.S. and 90 percent globally,” she continued. “To put that into perspective, today, it takes 60 class eight semis to emit what a single semi-truck emitted in 1988.”
Cummins, she said, has improved the per-gallon fuel mileage for its on highway heavy duty engines by nearly 25 percent since 2010. The company also set a goal of reducing 55 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from its products already in the field from 2014 to 2030. That equates to 5.4 billion gallons of diesel fuel and almost $20 billions in savings.
“In fact, we are hitting that goal early,” Rumsey shared. “I’m pleased to share our goal to double our efforts for products and use over the next five years, helping many of you further improve fuel efficiency and reduce operating costs.”
She said all of this was achieved while also navigating challenges such as the COVID-19 recession and subsequent supply chain disruptions.
“I believe this is a time for us to come together to move the industry forward, to focus on the positive impact we can have in the midst of the uncertainty and challenges we are facing right now,” she said. “I remind myself each day of the beauty and goodness and the people and the world around us, and the opportunity that I and we all have to make a positive difference to ensure a planet where we our kids and our grandkids have access to clean air and water.”
She explained that everyone plays a role in empowering a more prosperous world. She provided three elements that she thinks be essential for success, the first being the right government regulations.
“We need to set clear and challenging but also achievable goals that drive innovation and allow the best technologies to compete and help meet the standards we set,” she said. “We need certainty and time to meet them, regulations that force the adoption of certain technologies may exclude some of the best solutions, and they may also overlook meaningful improvements in today’s technologies. We don’t want to let perfect be the enemy of good.”
She explained that many power solutions and alternative fuel sources will be in the mix for a long time. These include diesel, biodiesel blends, natural gas and hydrogen engines, as well as battery electric, fuel cell and hybrid solutions, “because no single solution will meet our broader goals.”
“Fair and unbiased regulations enable businesses to invest in a diverse portfolio of technologies that drive innovation and give choice to nations’ fleets,” she continued.
Second, she said the industry must consider the life cycle emissions of fuel or energy when making decisions on emission reduction and standards. Rumsey explained that it’s not just about the tail pipe emissions, but the complete cost of fuel production, transportation and distribution.
She said the industry also needs to continue making innovative improvements in technology offerings “that both reduce greenhouse gas and improve fuel efficiency, allowing our customers to find the most efficient, cost-effective solutions for their business and application needs,” she said.
She noted that improved fuel efficiency is the biggest greenhouse gas emission savings opportunity. “Our industry will continue operating internal combustion engines for many years, and it’s important to continue to make tangible and incremental improvements to diesel, while also advancing low carbon alternate fuels to give customers choice as the infrastructure builds out,” she said.
Related: First Student’s Kenning Discusses School Bus Electrification, Technology Innovation
Related: Report Highlights Shift in Federal Policy from EVs to Conventional Fuels
Related: Gallery: ACT Expo 2025
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For example, the new Cummins X15 engine is designed to improve fuel economy by 4 percent while greatly reducing NOx. She added, however, that battery-electric technologies are a part of the solution mix for reducing emissions and aligning with sustainability goals.
“Lithium-ion battery price per kilowatt hour has dropped by more than 85 percent in the last decade, and we are starting to see an increasing number of economic cases for electric vehicle adoption in certain commercial vehicle applications,” she said. “For example, Blue Bird has delivered more than 2,500 school buses equipped with electric powertrains and estimates that more than 90 percent of school bus routes can now be served by electric buses. That said, we need to continue to innovate in this space to ensure total cost of ownership gets close to that of diesel and enable adoption.”
She added that Cummins is partnering with Paccar, Daimler Truck of North America and Amplify Cell Technologies to manufacture lithium-ion phosphate battery cells for commercial vehicles at a plant outside of Memphis, Tennessee. A spokesman later told School Transportation News that the battery cells will be ready for market in 2027.
“While we’re currently in a period of vast uncertainty, my hope is that we can be unquestionably certain about one thing, our shared commitment to continue powering a more prosperous world to moving forward together, because no one can do it alone,” she said.
The post Cummins CEO Says Mixed Fuel Approach is Key for Commercial Sector appeared first on School Transportation News.
SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. – GreenPower Motor Company Inc. (NASDAQ: GP) (TSXV: GPV) (“GreenPower”), a leading manufacturer and distributor of purpose-built, all-electric, zero-emission medium and heavy-duty vehicles serving the cargo and delivery market, shuttle and transit space and school bus sector, today announced that three Type D all-electric, purpose-built, zero-emission BEAST school buses have been delivered to its West Virginia dealer for the Grant County School District under Round 2 funding of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean School Bus Program (CSBP).
“GreenPower continues to manufacture and deliver its all-electric, purpose-built school bus products to its dealer in West Virginia and dealers across the nation for school districts in a timely manner despite the current uncertainties of public policy, tariffs and funding,” said Brendan Riley, President of GreenPower. “This week’s delivery to our West Virginia dealer is for the second school district in West Virginia under the Clean School Bus Program since the contract with EPA was signed just four months ago and the federal funding became available in mid-March.”
Delivery of the West Virginia-manufactured school buses under the EPA grant was paused for a few weeks as part of the freeze on spending implemented by the Trump Administration as the new EPA team evaluated program spending. After the freeze was lifted, GreenPower’s first delivery to its dealer in West Virginia under the CSBP was for Kanawha County and today’s announcement represents the second set of buses under the award to Grant County. Calhoun County’s school buses funded under the CSBP will be the next delivery for GreenPower to its dealer.
To date, GreenPower has delivered 22 of its all-electric, purpose-built, zero-emission school buses in West Virginia for deployment in school districts across the Mountain State, including 16 BEASTS and six Nano BEASTs. The deployments represent approximately one-half of the orders placed for West Virginia school districts that have installed charging infrastructure and are prepared to accept the buses.
As the leading purpose-built American manufacturer of EV school buses, GreenPower is the only all-electric OEM that manufactures both a Class 4 Type A school bus and a Class 8 Type D school bus. The BEAST is a purpose-built 40-foot Type D all-electric, zero-emission school bus with seating for up to 90 students. Designed from the ground up as an EV, it is a fully integrated structure that features a strong and corrosion resistant aluminum body made from extruded aluminum, manufactured by Constellium, seamlessly mated to a high strength steel Truss (bus) chassis. The complete flat floor design allows for adjustable track seating with no wheel wells in the passenger compartment, and the high floor keeps students out of the impact zone. Combined port charging is standard with Level 2 rates up to 19.2 kW and DC Fast Charging rates up to 85 kW, allowing for full charging in less than three hours.
About GreenPower Motor Company, Inc.
GreenPower designs, builds and distributes a full suite of high-floor and low-floor all-electric medium and heavy-duty vehicles, including transit buses, school buses, shuttles, cargo vans and a cab and chassis. GreenPower employs a clean-sheet design to manufacture all-electric vehicles that are purpose-built to be battery powered with zero emissions while integrating global suppliers for key components. This OEM platform allows GreenPower to meet the specifications of various operators while providing standard parts for ease of maintenance and accessibility for warranty requirements. GreenPower was founded in Vancouver, Canada with primary operational facilities in southern California. Listed on the Toronto exchange since November 2015, GreenPower completed its U.S. IPO and NASDAQ listing in August 2020. For further information go to www.greenpowermotor.com.
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The auction of electric school bus and truck manufacturer Lion Electric Company is moving forward after a last-ditch effort to obtain government funding from the province of Quebec fell through.
Christine Fréchette, Quebec’s minister of economy, innovation and energy, posted on X last week that the Quebec government will not reinvest in Lion after passing on a recovery plan that was submitted to save the manufacturer but on a limited scale.
“This is a difficult, but responsible decision. It’s a local company that offers an innovative product that contributes to the energy transition. The government has a responsibility to support the growth of Quebec businesses,” she posted. “We believed in Lion’s potential, but the submitted recovery plan did not justify the re-injection of significant government sums. Unfortunately, one thing is clear: Granting new funds to Lion Electric would not be a responsible decision.”
On Monday in a Quebec court, a representative of Deloitte that is overseeing the insolvency said without the additional funding all remaining Lion assets will need to be sold.
The court lifted a stay on the auction managed by Deloitte may proceed after issuing a stay in March while Lion sought the additional funding.
The company reportedly owes $244 million to secured and non-secured creditors. A Lion Electric spokesman had no comment when asked by School Transportation News.
Bloomberg News reported that an investment group created the recovery plan that would have resulted in Lion Electric only manufacturing electric school buses going forward out of its St. Jerome plant. But the province already lost $128 million U.S. in investments into Lion with the Canadian federal government losing another $30 million U.S. Ottawa had also invested in Lion.
Public Money at Risk in Lion Electric:
o 2021: $19 million Canadian from Investissement Québec (IQ) to purchase shares
o 2021: $37 million from a loan offered by Quebec for the battery pack plant
o 2021: $21 million from the Ottawa loan for the battery pack complex
o 2022: $15 million in a loan from the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec
o 2023: $98 million loaned by IQ, the Fonds de solidarité FTQ, and Fondaction CSN
o 2024: $7.5 million in a loan from the Quebec governmentSource: La Presse
Power Corp. of Canada, according to Bloomberg, was the largest Lion shareholder with a 34-percent stake but has already written down its Canadian $81 million position in the company to zero.
Montreal-based online newspaper La Presse broke the news Wednesday, reporting that an unnamed U.S. investment firm expressed serious interest in purchasing the Lion assets, but the Quebec proposal had been the most promising.
La Presse also reported that Lion will likely be sold off in parts, which would mean the end of the company. It laid off all its employees, including those in the U.S., and ceased operations except for a select few senior executives working out of Quebec to try and salvage the company. Deloitte is overseeing the the company’s insolvency proceedings and an auction of its assets.
There are about 2,000 Lion Electric school buses at school districts and school bus companies across North America that will need maintenance and customer service going forward.
This is a developing story.
Related: Lion Electric Customers Have Options Despite Insurmountable Debit Forcing the Manufacturer to Auction
Related: Update: Lion Electric Defaults on Credit Repayment, Says It is Avoiding Bankruptcy
Related: Brunet Resigns as Lion Electric President Amid Company Battle to Stay Solvent
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The electric school bus landscape is fraught with unknowns. Not long ago, that meant range anxiety, infrastructure challenges, supply chain disruption, lengthy delays in receiving orders from the manufacturers, and not knowing when the purchase price would come down.
At least student transporters knew Uncle Sam could foot some or most of the bill for the next couple of years. Last April, the conversation in this magazine on electric school buses, or ESBs, centered on cold-weather operations. The chill in today’s air, at this writing, has been the freeze of future U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Clean School Bus Program funding.
While the industry received good news in late February that the Clean School Bus Program portal was reopened for round one and two rebates and grants, 2023 rebate funds were not available for withdrawal at at press time.
The yellow school bus and reducing harmful diesel emissions from them should be an easy sell. The program also has backing on both sides of the congressional aisle. One of the most recent calls to release the funding came via a Feb. 27 letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. The letter, signed by 18 Democratic senators and led by Sen. Edward Markey of Pennsylvania, notes the Clean School Bus Program supporting 8,500 clean school bus projects in more than 1,200 school districts through fiscal year 2024. The letter also asked when the rest of funds would be released.
Zeldin had not responded at this writing.
There was no word when the Clean School Bus Program would resume, not to mention when awards from the most recent rebate program would be announced. The EPA website still says 2024 rebate selection notifications are scheduled for next month. We will wait and see.
Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that called for $5 billion over five years. There is $2.2 billion remaining to be spent. It would seem unlikely for Congress to end the program prematurely. But budget trimming has become quite the fashion in Washington, D.C.
As of early March, the World Resource Institute’s Electric School Bus Initiative reports there were 5,123 ESBs delivered or in operation nationwide but another 8,757 committed or awarded. It’s important to note that nearly 96 percent of Clean School Bus Program funds have gone toward purchasing electric school buses, the remainder propane buses or a negligible amount of CNG.
Meanwhile, last month Zeldin announced he was halting multiple EPA regulations for further review, especially those deemed by the Trump administration to be an “electric mandate.” There is no such mandate at the federal level, per se. But one could argue that EPA’s Phase III GHG emissions regulation, among three dozen regulations under review by Zeldin’s office, essentially forces truck and bus operators to switch to zero-emissions vehicles for a lack of readily available alternatives, at least in the quantities that states and school districts need.
The electric school bus movement is too large to fail, with OEMs investing millions of dollars on R&D and school districts investing millions more of taxpayer money on vehicle purchasing and related infrastructure. Minus the Clean School Bus Program, the impetus
to continue electric programs could fall squarely on the shoulders of states based on school district demand.
The Californias and New Yorks of the world have already made up their minds that electric school buses are the path forward, and they have the deep pockets and political will to continue subsidizing programs. For most other states, especially if EPA rolls back Phase III, diesel will remain entrenched as the only choice for many.
Adding to the options available in 2027, Cummins’ gasoline engine is slated for full production that year. Last month, the company announced its new diesel engine that meets Phase III will also launch in 2027. We must wait and see if or when more propane options
become available to the marketplace.
Could this all lead to more renewable diesel? So far, RD has only made inroads to the Low Carbon Fuel Standard states of California, Oregon, Washington and New Mexico, which subsidize the premium price and drive supply to market. That path has always made a lot of sense to me, as the drop-in fuel reduces GHG, NOx and PM compared to regular diesel and meets engine warranty requirements.
Student transporters have challenging school bus purchasing and energy adoption decisions to make over the next four years. That might not seem like a long time until you realize that’s one-third of an average school bus lifecycle.
Editor’s Note: As reprinted in the April 2025 issue of School Transportation News.
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The post Moving Target? appeared first on School Transportation News.
School districts that have purchased some 2,000 Lion Electric school buses are in a wait-and-see mode regarding repairs and warranties following the company filing for and receiving protection from its creditors under the Canadian Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA).
Compounding the challenge in securing electric school buses are climate-related initiatives on the Trump administration radar.
In late January, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget listed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program—which has helped fund electric bus purchases—as one of the many federal spending programs the Trump administration attempted to freeze in January. Despite a federal judge blocking that move, the funds were slow to start flowing again at this report.
Meanwhile, Lion could be acquired through an auction of its assets by next month. A Lion representative said the company was not bankrupt or in liquidation, per “the recognition of the CCAA proceedings in the U.S. pursuant to Chapter 15 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.”
A School Transportation News report about Lion Electric’s financial status outlined the company’s many layoffs and an SEC filing announcing the resignation of company president Nicolas Brunet in November. At this report, all U.S. employees had been laid off, with only a handful of executives based in Canada still working.
In 2023, Lion Electric opened its Joliet, Illinois plant, a move celebrated with much fanfare and investment by elected officials and local business leaders. The 900,000-square-foot facility was hailed as the largest all-electric U.S. plant dedicated to medium and heavy-duty commercial vehicle production. The plant was expected to produce 20,000 school buses a year.
In all, Lion Electric has more than 2,200 electric commercial vehicles on the roads across North America, logging more than 62,000 miles a week and more than 32 million driven miles transporting 130,000 children, noted company spokesman Patrick Gervais.
Continued delays and challenges associated with the granting of subsidies to Lion’s clients related to the Canadian Zero-Emission Transit Fund program, Gervais added. “Given the capital-intensive nature of its business, the Lion Group has required significant investment and capital over the years to operate its business,” he explained. “Such investment and capital have come in the form of longterm debt.”
He said the timing of EPA Clean School Bus Program funding rounds was also a challenge.
Funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the program had been designed to provide $5 billion from fiscal years 2022 to 2026 to replace existing school buses with zero-emission and clean school buses. To date, 1,039 awards have been issued to 1,344 school districts and nearly $2.785 billion of the total $5 billion has been awarded, replacing 8,936 buses. But as of this report, when and if 2024 rebates and subsequent funds are in doubt. The EPA did not respond to a request for comment on Lion, referring STN instead to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Public Affairs, which also had not responded at this report.
Meanwhile, the phase-one bid deadline for the company and its assets was Feb. 5 with a phase-two bid deadline of March 7. Auctions as required take place during the week of March 10 with the selection of final bids on March 19. Approval application of successful bids takes place during the week of March 31. The earliest closing is April 7.
The application for sale and investment solicitation for the CCAA monitored by court-appointed Deloitte Touche states that Lion leases the Joliet plant as well as its Saint-Jerome, Quebec headquarters—which included manufacturing, R&D, and testing and experience centers—and Mirabel, Quebec battery manufacturing facility. Gervais said Lion continues to assist customers with the maintenance and servicing of their vehicles for school buses and trucks, including warranty, adding that customers can follow the same claims process for warranty repairs.
“We are conducting the necessary follow-ups and aim to provide the highest level of support possible in the circumstances to customers with their fleet,” he added. “Our service team remains in action to support customers.”
Gervais added Lion is also committed to providing clients with as much information as possible to assist them remotely in resolving their issues. “Complex repairs and technology-related breakdowns will be prioritized for on-site support during this period,” he said.
Lion Electric established experience/service centers: Three in California as well as one each in Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Texas, Vermont and Washington. Only the Sacramento, California, location remained open at this report.
“It is important to emphasize that customer service is maintained for all customers, trucks and buses, regardless of the state or city they are located in,” Gervais said.
What’s Next for Lion and Its Customers?
Lion Electric sent an email to customers in December regarding its financial situation, stating that its management remained in control of the company during the CCAA process with the anticipation the customer’s existing “point person” at Lion would not change.
Despite the subsequent layoffs, Gervais said school transportation departments can work directly with parts suppliers as needed.
Yet many school districts find themselves with little to no customer support because their reps no longer work for the company. Or they have active purchase orders for new electric school buses that won’t be delivered.
Peoria Public Schools in Illinois was awarded a 2023 EPA Clean School Bus Program grant to purchase 15 electric buses and infrastructure. Joshua Collins, director of transportation and fleet services, said Peoria chose Lion because its electric vehicle manufacturing experience.
“At the time, they were building the plant in Joliet, so they were local and looked like they were the people to go with,” he added. “Fast forward a year later, and things didn’t go their way and didn’t work out.”
Collins noted he doesn’t know what’s left of the company. “It left us in limbo because we had made a purchase agreement with them,” he continued. “We’re navigating with our attorneys on what steps we should take and what we need to do. How do we separate ourselves from this? How do we end these service purchase agreements?
“We’ve moved on to another partner we are working with. We have to vacate our purchase agreement with Lion, which we’re still in the process of doing through our attorneys. We don’t want to get stuck with two purchase agreements.”
Collins said he was also concerned about a potential federal pause in funding “and we [hope we] are able to use those and move forward. It’s just been one thing after another, after another.”
Half of the 50-bus fleet operated by Herscher Community Unit School District 2 fleet in Illinois is comprised of Lion Electric buses, said Superintendent Dr. Richard Decman. He added that the school district selected Lion Electric because of manufacturing at now shuttered plant in nearby Joliet.
“Our district was given $9.875 million for the purchase of 25 electric buses and the related charging stations. Lion Electric worked directly with us to write the grant,
so that we did not have to worry about spending an inordinate amount of time on grant writing for something that may or may not happen,” he explained.
Decman said an additional benefit included projected long-term savings of operating electric buses compared to internal combustion engine buses. He said an analysis completed after one semester of use showed $125,000 to $150,000 in total savings per year.
Long-term health benefits to the school community are derived from less emissions from electric buses compared to diesel buses and the ability to get air-conditioned buses, he added.
“Weight is evenly distributed, the bus is quiet, and the bus is slightly larger, so the aisles and seats are more comfortable for the movement of passengers,” Decman added. “We wanted to get a head start on working out the kinks of implementing this type of technology as we believe it is likely a matter of time before more schools see the benefits.”
Decman indicated to Canadian media that while he’s been pleased with bus performance to date, it’s taking longer to secure replacement parts for minor maintenance issues, like replacing a stop arm motor, a door open/close motor, a heat sensor, and a strobe light fuse.
“Most if not all of our new contacts are no longer in the state,” said Decman. “Since we have our own mechanics, as long as we can get parts and have their experts show our guys what is needed, via Zoom is fine, location is not really an issue for most repairs.
“We just want to make sure we can get the parts in a timely fashion as well,” he continued. “Obviously, if a bus gets in an accident or needs major repairs, that will be a different story. Hopefully this all gets resolved one way or another.”
Decman added that his biggest concern is whether the warranties on the district’s buses will carry over if the company is sold.
Dr. Andrew Brooks, superintendent of schools for the Wethersfield District #230 in Kewanee, Illinois, said the purchase last fall of three Lion Electric buses was funded by EPA. Upon finding out the company was in financial trouble, he reached out to his service contact, who relayed that he had been laid off.
If Lion Electric cannot find a buyer, Brooks said the district will seek another supplier. “We are looking at Blue Bird, IC, and Thomas [Built Buses] models of EV buses,” he added.
Brooks said there is no delay in student transportation operations as Wethersfield awaits Lion Electric’s status “as they can still provide them on our timetable, if they power back up.”
Yarmouth School Department in Maine bought two Lion Electric buses in 2023 with federal grant money, said Superintendent Dr. Andrew Dolloff. The community’s Climate Action Committee along with students and school staff “placed a priority on awareness and action pertaining to climate change and use of renewable energy,” he said. “A quality EV bus program aligns with the town’s goal of being carbon neutral in the coming decade.”
Dolloff told Canadian media the Lion Electric buses often display messages indicating heating, electrical or battery problems, necessitating they be pulled out of service.
It has taken weeks to months to get someone from Lion Electric to visit the area and fix the issue, he said. “We have asked for the buses to be replaced, not likely or for compensation to be made so we can purchase others, also not likely, and have communicated with Maine’s Department of Education and the Governor’s Office, who have reached out to the EPA to see if there might be some relief provided through their grant programs,” Dolloff said.
Customers do have other options. “We are able to assist districts with maintenance on Lion EV buses. Maintenance on electric school buses is part of our offering to all districts, regardless, if you contract with First Student for home to school services or not,” noted
Danielle Becker, senior marketing manager for First Student, of the fee-based service. “We can provide maintenance for all vehicles including diesel/ gasoline yellow and white fleet. We are able to provide comprehensive preventative and corrective maintenance. Districts can contract directly with First Services or use the buying cooperative Sourcewell to contract with First Services for maintenance services.”
Much of the customer service Lion provided was via a proprietary remote diagnostics tool. Frank Naelitz, the director of electric vehicle maintenance for First Student, said any school bus customer should be wary about losing turnkey service when the provider ceases operation. Because the school bus contractor owns and operates 350 Lions—all of which operate in Quebec—Naelitz helped to create a technical assistance center and First Student’s own remote diagnostics tool, available at all 600 of its locations.
“That same infrastructure is able to provide some of that technical support to groups outside of First Student, if there is that need,” he explained. “That program does anything from finding service information to remoting into a diagnostics computer at the point of repair and helping them trouble shoot while connected to the vehicle, reviewing log files from various components. We could probably source parts at some point.”
Todd Hawkins, First Student’s senior vice president of maintenance, explained that all company technicians use tablets for work orders. “A tech can log in to the help desk and Frank can take over their iPad, take pictures of what they’re working on, draw on it, write in specs. He can walk them through a repair. We may end up dispensing these programs where we could talk to [techs] directly,” he added, noting the company won’t work on high-voltage issues without the customer first taking basic arc flash and other relevant training.
Editor’s Note: As reprinted in the March 2025 issue of School Transportation News.
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Across a career’s worth of pioneering product designs, Doug Field’s work has shaped the experience of anyone who’s ever used a MacBook Air, ridden a Segway, or driven a Tesla Model 3.
But his newest project is his most ambitious yet: reinventing the Ford automobile, one of the past century’s most iconic pieces of technology.
As Ford’s chief electric vehicle (EV), digital, and design officer, Field is tasked with leading the development of the company’s electric vehicles, while making new software platforms central to all Ford models.
To bring Ford Motor Co. into that digital and electric future, Field effectively has to lead a fast-moving startup inside the legacy carmaker. “It is incredibly hard, figuring out how to do ‘startups’ within large organizations,” he concedes.
If anyone can pull it off, it’s likely to be Field. Ever since his time in MIT’s Leaders for Global Operations (then known as “Leaders in Manufacturing”) program studying organizational behavior and strategy, Field has been fixated on creating the conditions that foster innovation.
“The natural state of an organization is to make it harder and harder to do those things: to innovate, to have small teams, to go against the grain,” he says. To overcome those forces, Field has become a master practitioner of the art of curating diverse, talented teams and helping them flourish inside of big, complex companies.
“It’s one thing to make a creative environment where you can come up with big ideas,” he says. “It’s another to create an execution-focused environment to crank things out. I became intrigued with, and have been for the rest of my career, this question of how can you have both work together?”
Three decades after his first stint as a development engineer at Ford Motor Co., Field now has a chance to marry the manufacturing muscle of Ford with the bold approach that helped him rethink Apple’s laptops and craft Tesla’s Model 3 sedan. His task is nothing less than rethinking how cars are made and operated, from the bottom up.
“If it’s only creative or execution, you’re not going to change the world,” he says. “If you want to have a huge impact, you need people to change the course you’re on, and you need people to build it.”
A passion for design
From a young age, Field had a fascination with automobiles. “I was definitely into cars and transportation more generally,” he says. “I thought of cars as the place where technology and art and human design came together — cars were where all my interests intersected.”
With a mother who was an artist and musician and an engineer father, Field credits his parents’ influence for his lifelong interest in both the aesthetic and technical elements of product design. “I think that’s why I’m drawn to autos — there’s very much an aesthetic aspect to the product,” he says.
After earning a degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University, Field took a job at Ford in 1987. The big Detroit automakers of that era excelled at mass-producing cars, but weren’t necessarily set up to encourage or reward innovative thinking. Field chafed at the “overstructured and bureaucratic” operational culture he encountered.
The experience was frustrating at times, but also valuable and clarifying. He realized that he “wanted to work with fast-moving, technology-based businesses.”
“My interest in advancing technical problem-solving didn’t have a place in the auto industry” at the time, he says. “I knew I wanted to work with passionate people and create something that didn’t exist, in an environment where talent and innovation were prized, where irreverence was an asset and not a liability. When I read about Silicon Valley, I loved the way they talked about things.”
During that time, Field took two years off to enroll in MIT’s LGO program, where he deepened his technical skills and encountered ideas about manufacturing processes and team-driven innovation that would serve him well in the years ahead.
“Some of core skill sets that I developed there were really, really important,” he says, “in the context of production lines and production processes.” He studied systems engineering and the use of Monte Carlo simulations to model complex manufacturing environments. During his internship with aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, he worked on automated design in computer-aided design (CAD) systems, long before those techniques became standard practice.
Another powerful tool he picked up was the science of probability and statistics, under the tutelage of MIT Professor Alvin Drake in his legendary course 6.041/6.431 (Probabilistic Systems Analysis). Field would go on to apply those insights not only to production processes, but also to characterizing variability in people’s aptitudes, working styles, and talents, in the service of building better, more innovative teams. And studying organizational strategy catalyzed his career-long interest in “ways to look at innovation as an outcome, rather than a random spark of genius.”
“So many things I was lucky to be exposed to at MIT,” Field says, were “all building blocks, pieces of the puzzle, that helped me navigate through difficult situations later on.”
Learning while leading
After leaving Ford in 1993, Field worked at Johnson and Johnson Medical for three years in process development. There, he met Segway inventor Dean Kamen, who was working on a project called the iBOT, a gyroscopic powered wheelchair that could climb stairs.
When Kamen spun off Segway to develop a new personal mobility device using the same technology, Field became his first hire. He spent nearly a decade as the firm’s chief technology officer.
At Segway, Field’s interests in vehicles, technology, innovation, process, and human-centered design all came together.
“When I think about working now on electric cars, it was a real gift,” he says. The problems they tackled prefigured the ones he would grapple with later at Tesla and Ford. “Segway was very much a precursor to a modern EV. Completely software controlled, with higher-voltage batteries, redundant systems, traction control, brushless DC motors — it was basically a miniature Tesla in the year 2000.”
At Segway, Field assembled an “amazing” team of engineers and designers who were as passionate as he was about pushing the envelope. “Segway was the first place I was able to hand-pick every single person I worked with, define the culture, and define the mission.”
As he grew into this leadership role, he became equally engrossed with cracking another puzzle: “How do you prize people who don’t fit in?”
“Such a fundamental part of the fabric of Silicon Valley is the love of embracing talent over a traditional organization’s ways of measuring people,” he says. “If you want to innovate, you need to learn how to manage neurodivergence and a very different set of personalities than the people you find in large corporations.”
Field still keeps the base housing of a Segway in his office, as a reminder of what those kinds of teams — along with obsessive attention to detail — can achieve.
Before joining Apple in 2008, he showed that component, with its clean lines and every minuscule part in its place in one unified package, to his prospective new colleagues. “They were like, “OK, you’re one of us,’” he recalls.
He soon became vice president of hardware development for all Mac computers, leading the teams behind the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro and eventually overseeing more than 2,000 employees. “Making things really simple and really elegant, thinking about the product as an integrated whole, that really took me into Apple.”
The challenge of giving the MacBook Air its signature sleek and light profile is an example.
“The MacBook Air was the first high-volume consumer electronic product built out of a CNC-machined enclosure,” says Field. He worked with industrial design and technology teams to devise a way to make the laptop from one solid piece of aluminum and jettison two-thirds of the parts found in the iMac. “We had material cut away so that every single screw and piece of electronics sat down into it an integrated way. That’s how we got the product so small and slim.”
“When I interviewed with Jony Ive” — Apple’s legendary chief design officer — “he said your ability to zoom out and zoom in was the number one most important ability as a leader at Apple.” That meant zooming out to think about “the entire ethos of this product, and the way it will affect the world” and zooming all the way back in to obsess over, say, the physical shape of the laptop itself and what it feels like in a user’s hands.
“That thread of attention to detail, passion for product, design plus technology rolled directly into what I was doing at Tesla,” he says. When Field joined Tesla in 2013, he was drawn to the way the brash startup upended the approach to making cars. “Tesla was integrating digital technology into cars in a way nobody else was. They said, ‘We’re not a car company in Silicon Valley, we’re a Silicon Valley company and we happen to make cars.’”
Field assembled and led the team that produced the Model 3 sedan, Tesla’s most affordable vehicle, designed to have mass-market appeal.
That experience only reinforced the importance, and power, of zooming in and out as a designer — in a way that encompasses the bigger human resources picture.
“You have to have a broad sense of what you’re trying to accomplish and help people in the organization understand what it means to them,” he says. “You have to go across and understand operations enough to glue all of those (things) together — while still being great at and focused on something very, very deeply. That’s T-shaped leadership.”
He credits his time at LGO with providing the foundation for the “T-shaped leadership” he practices.
“An education like the one I got at MIT allowed me to keep moving that ‘T’, to focus really deep, learn a ton, teach as much as I can, and after something gets more mature, pull out and bed down into other areas where the organization needs to grow or where there’s a crisis.”
The power of marrying scale to a “startup mentality”
In 2018, Field returned to Apple as a vice president for special projects. “I left Tesla after Model 3 and Y started to ramp, as there were people better than me to run high-volume manufacturing,” he says. “I went back to Apple hoping what Tesla had learned would motivate Apple to get into a different market.”
That market was his early love: cars. Field quietly led a project to develop an electric vehicle at Apple for three years.
Then Ford CEO Jim Farley came calling. He persuaded Field to return to Ford in late 2021, partly by demonstrating how much things had changed since his first stint as the carmaker.
“Two things came through loud and clear,” Field says. “One was humility. ‘Our success is not assured.’” That attitude was strikingly different from Field’s early experience in Detroit, encountering managers who were resistant to change. “The other thing was urgency. Jim and Bill Ford said the exact same thing to me: ‘We have four or five years to completely remake this company.’”
“I said, ‘OK, if the top of company really believes that, then the auto industry may be ready for what I hope to offer.’”
So far, Field is energized and encouraged by the appetite for reinvention he’s encountered this time around at Ford.
“If you can combine what Ford does really well with what a Tesla or Rivian can do well, this is something to be reckoned with,” says Field. “Skunk works have become one of the fundamental tools of my career,” he says, using an industry term that describes a project pursued by a small, autonomous group of people within a larger organization.
Ford has been developing a new, lower-cost, software-enabled EV platform — running all of the car’s sensors and components from a central digital operating system — with a “skunk works” team for the past two years. The company plans to build new sedans, SUVs, and small pickups based on this new platform.
With other legacy carmakers like Volvo racing into the electric future and fierce competition from EV leaders Tesla and Rivian, Field and his colleagues have their work cut out for them.
If he succeeds, leveraging his decades of learning and leading from LGO to Silicon Valley, then his latest chapter could transform the way we all drive — and secure a spot for Ford at the front of the electric vehicle pack in the process.
“I’ve been lucky to feel over and over that what I’m doing right now — they are going to write a book about it,” say Field. “This is a big deal, for Ford and the U.S. auto industry, and for American industry, actually.”
© Photo courtesy of the Ford Motor Co.
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