Lion Electric may have a friend in Bobby Rush

U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Chicago, has been the bane of NorthPoint opponents because of his vocal support for the project, but he could become the darling of The Lion Electric Company.

Rush is an advocate for federal funding to speed up America’s conversion to electric vehicles.

Lion Electric, if you didn’t already know, is the company that plans to begin building electric buses and trucks in Joliet by late 2022.

Their market would be boosted by the kind of federal spending advocated by Rush.

Rush on Thursday added an amendment to the controversial infrastructure bill going through Congress. The amendment denotes $36.6 billion over five years to support the advancement of electric vehicles and transportation. That includes $2.5 billion a year to expand domestic manufacturing of electric vehicles.

The bill including the amendment passed through the House.

What this has to do with infrastructure may be a question Republicans ask in the Senate, which has to go along with the idea before it becomes law. Republicans have resisted attempts to expand traditional road-and-bridges infrastructure spending. So, it remains to be seen whether the Rush money gets put in the federal budget.

But the federal government already is spending millions to spur the development of electric transportation.

Rush joined the U.S. Department of Transportation last week in announcing that the Chicago Transit Authority will get $7 million to convert to electric buses. The Chicago money is part of a $182 million program to finance a transition to electric buses across the country.

This kind of government money may explain why Lion Electric, a Canadian company that has built 400 electric buses and trucks at its factory outside Montreal since 2016, wants to open a factory in the United States. Lion Electric says its Joliet plant will be able to produce 20,000 vehicles a year.

“Twenty thousand in my estimation isn’t going to be enough capacity for what I see coming for this industry,” Lion Electric Vice President of Sales Nate Baguio told the Joliet City Council before it approved a property tax abatement for the factory on June 15.

Rush was not in Joliet with Gov. JB Pritzker on May 7, when the governor joined Lion Electric to announce the plan for the bus-and-truck factory already under construction.

But they would be presumed allies in this cause, unlike NorthPoint.

While his base is in Chicago, Rush’s congressional district extends into Will County as far as Elwood.

Rush wants the governor to take over an Elwood road so NorthPoint can build the bridge over Route 53 it needs for its Compass Global Logistics Hub. Elwood is fighting NorthPoint in court, and the governor has stayed out of it.

If the state stays out of it maybe Rush should try turning Walter Strawn Road into the first federal highway on which electric vehicles only are allowed.