The State of West Virginia has issued GreenPower Motor Company a final notice of default, saying the electric school bus manufacturer fell months behind on lease payments, according to records obtained by MetroNews.
The state Department of Economic Development, in a May 22 letter obtained through a public records request, says GreenPower is required to make good on all lease payments within 30 days or state agencies “will seek further legal remedies available.”
And, in the final paragraph, state officials add this customer service note: “In addition to the foregoing Lease Payment matter, the WVDED has been made aware of the West Virginia School Board’s various issues with the safety and quality of GreenPower buses delivered to date. We expect that these issues will be resolved in future deliveries.”
The state and the company are, more specifically, in conflict over whether GreenPower should have to pay down a full $1.3 million for property under the terms of their lease agreement. GreenPower says that additional property, which was adjacent to the South Charleston plant, was crucial to its transportation needs but the state did not deliver.
GreenPower officials, in an hour-long discussion with MetroNews, disagreed with all of that — saying the state has not appropriately calculated the lease terms, that delays of about 18 months on the development timeline have been an uphill battle and saying it still intends to manufacture school buses.
Company executives contend the state’s actions have significantly affected Green Power’s operations and financial stability.
GreenPower executives were thinking through how to respond to what they perceived as, essentially, a breakup letter from the state and expected to have a written response early this week, in advance of the 30-day deadline.
“The reality is, if somebody is telling you they’re breaking up with you, you can’t ignore that,” said Fraser Atkinson, GreenPower’s chief executive, saying the company has wanted to discuss its position in greater detail with state officials.
Normally, he said, the company would have already responded but “this one’s a challenge. You know, we want to, we want to get that response right. And if we’re going to try and dial down the temperature, then, you know, we can’t do that in the context of sounding like we don’t agree with even our own positions. I mean it’s tough.”
He said some state and local officials have still been encouraging, but among key leaders “you know, there has been a change of guard, and this change of guard doesn’t seem to be too interested in working with us.
“And that’s what we’re trying to dissect right now — that, if that’s the reality that we’re having to deal with, then what’s our what’s our path forward?”
Senator Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said in a news briefing last week that she hopes GreenPower can succeed despite all the turmoil.
“I just don’t know what their business plan is. I hope they can get it together, so to speak, so that we can be part of the green power and green school bus economy,” Capito said in response to a MetroNews question.
“I don’t have any new information that would beyond the fact that the second layoff that they put forward looks like they’re pretty much shutting down, and that’s a great disappointment to me, because I really tried to help them.”
GreenPower agreement
Three years ago, West Virginia officials celebrated the arrival of GreenPower Motor Company, an electric school bus manufacturer that could generate hundreds of jobs and deliver its products round and round the state.
“Not only will it bring hundreds of great paying jobs to the Kanawha Valley, but the ripple effects on our state’s economy are going to be off-the-charts,” then-Gov. Jim Justice said at the time.
State officials said the operation would bring up to 200 new jobs to the state when manufacturing started in late 2022, with the potential workforce to eventually reach up to 900 new jobs when full production hit two years after that.
Yet an update from the company at the end of 2024 counted 89 employees at a facility in South Charleston. Near the end of May, GreenPower notified more than a dozen of those workers that they were being laid off.
Under an agreement with the state that could have paid out up to $15 million, GreenPower was in line to deliver 41 buses for use around West Virginia. Yet as of this spring, only about a dozen had been delivered.
In a separate financial arrangement, GreenPower was in line to deliver 50 all-electric buses to seven West Virginia county school systems as part of an $18.5 million order through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program. Just a few of those buses have come through.
In a deal with West Virginia officials GreenPower was to acquire 9.5 acres and an 80-square foot building in South Charleston. Lease terms required no cash up front, and monthly lease payments were to begin nine months after production started. All lease payments were to be applied to eventual purchase of the property.
GreenPower had plans to start manufacturing school buses in the facility by the second half of 2022. The state was to provide up to $3.5 million in employment incentive payments to GreenPower for jobs created in the state as production ramped up over time.
Title was to be transferred to GreenPower once total lease and incentive payments reached $6.7 million.
The hard part
That agreement and whether each side lived up to the commitment that could have paid off for both is the focal point of friction now.
“Recruiting a company is the easy part; nurturing and retaining a company, the hard part,” GreenPower President Brendan Riley wrote to state officials in an August 6, 2024, letter.
His memo outlined GreenPower activities but suggested key state figures had generally demonstrated disinterest since a ribbon cutting two years earlier.
Delays caused by the state led to significant production setbacks, according to GreenPower, which documented its complaints in months-long correspondence with state officials.
Broadly, the company maintains the delays kicked its timetable first into a period of historic inflation and then into aggressive tariffs, ramping up costs.
Green Power could not move into its building until August 2022, company officials said, resulting in significant production delays. Further disruptions outlined by company executives included a year-and-a-half delay in obtaining a paint booth permit.
The company’s concerns were marked first by an April 27, 2023 letter noting that the company would be making its first $50,000 loan payment while contending government officials had not yet made good on acquiring additional parcels, including a rail spur, under the terms of the agreement.
By August 26 of last year, Atkinson, the GreenPower chief executive, wrote that the state was subject to a material breach. GreenPower said the original agreement laid out that the remedy should be loan forgiveness.
State officials wrote back Oct. 3, 2024, to acknowledge the additional parcels had not been acquired, but maintaining that the remedy laid out in the agreement would be applying loan forgiveness through whatever fraction of workers GreenPower was maintaining vs. the goal of 200 employees.
GreenPower’s Atkinson sent back a letter six days later, beginning “There seems to be some confusion between the two parties.” It again laid out GreenPower’s position and concluded, “GreenPower Manufacturing of WV Inc and GreenPower Motor Company Inc. rreserve all remedies available” for contractual breaches.
That was the last correspondence between the state and the company until the May 22 letter hit.
Each entity has described the possibility of exploring legal options. Atkinson said before matters proceed to that point, GreenPower would prefer to outline fundamental areas of disagreement — “and can we schedule a meeting or a call and try and dial down the temperature a little bit.”
Asked about the status of buses ordered through the state Department of Education or via grant dollars from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Atkinson said the company still intends to deliver. Yet he referred to the strains that aggressive tariffs are placing on supply chains.
“First off,” he said, “we’re building to the entirety of that order, and we have, you know, at various stages of production, every single one of those is in production.
“But if we get booted out of this facility, that becomes one more factor in terms ‘OK, now how are we going to accomplish this?'”