Proterra

Um, and so, you know, we're really delighted at Paces to have been working with Redwood Materials for the last while, but we love to let guests learn a bit about you, Claire, to start.

You know, you spent a number of years at both Tesla Energy and Proterra.

What was the moment you decided to kinda move on to Redwood Materials, and tell us a little bit about that early career that you had.

Yeah.

And then also, just to grow and be with them has been, uh, awesome so far.

I guess, like, those previous roles, right, the role of the importance of batteries, you know, people are thinking a lot about batteries, and I think there's been this promise for the impact battery can have in a lot of different spaces going back again, you know, all those different years.

And both Proterra, Tesla, now Redwood, you know, thinks about batteries in somewhat different ways.

How have you kinda seen that transition, both in terms of the specific products and, and companies you worked on, but then also the industry itself and the different kind of use cases for batteries as, you know, batteries improved and perception of those batteries have improved over time?

Of course, it's also Biden era federal subsidies that largely paid the freight for these buses.

But we asked in December of 2023, about the purchase of these buses because the company behind them, the manufacturer called Proterra had filed for bankruptcy and several other cities were having issues getting replacement parts and doing basic maintenance because when the company goes bankrupt then Their suppliers, their resources are limited, specifically financial, because the process of bankruptcy, without going fully into all that, you are essentially taking a haircut as a supplier of the bankrupt company.

You're going to lose some amount of money that you are owed.

So when the prospects for a return from bankruptcy are not particularly amazing, Companies may not want to supply you with cash or various components and parts and whatever goes into those bus parts.

They make the worst mistakes, and they don't stop

19, Miami-Dade County signed a deal to buy electric buses from a company called Proterra.

Broward County jumped on board with their own order too.

By the time it was all said and done, Miami-Dade ended up with 69 electric buses for $61.8 million, and Broward bought 31 more for around 34 million, roughly 1.1 million a bus.

Do the math.

Parts for these things are proprietary, meaning the counties couldn't just go find a replacement part somewhere.

They had to go through the manufacturer, and the manufacturer, Proterra, went bankrupt.

Of course they did.