Canadian Startup Picks Up The Electric Truck, Bus, And Van Slack

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

The vehicle electrification movement sure looked like it was grinding to a halt in the US last year, underscored by Tesla’s ongoing sales slide while both Ford and GM pulled back sharply on their domestic EV manufacturing plans. Still, signs of a rebirth are already emerging, the latest example being a new electric truck, bus, and van factory in New Mexico under the wing of the Canadian startup GreenPower Motor Company.

GreenPower Motor Who?

If the name GreenPower doesn’t ring any bells, join the club. The startup launched in 2010 and introduced its first vehicle, the EV350 40-foot electric bus, in 2014.

If slow and steady wins the race, GreenPower is on to something. The Vancouver-based company, which operates facilities in California and West Virginia, didn’t receive an order for the EV350 until 2017, when the city of Porterville dialed up ten of the buses with an assist from a $9.5 million grant through the California Air Resource Board.

In 2017 GreenPower also introduced the multi-use EV Star vehicle, listing paratransit, micro-transit, executive shuttle, vanpool, and cargo delivery markets for the medium-duty truck platform. Other models soon followed, including the 30-foot EV250 electric bus and the BEAST series of electric school buses, scalable from “Nano” to “Mega.”

In 2020 GreenPower re-affirmed EV Star as a universal cab and chassis product, upon which clients can customize the rest of their vehicle to their specific needs. “This is the nation’s first purpose-built, class 4 battery-electric cab, and chassis,” GreenPower noted.

“This platform is not only for the GreenPower EV Star Mobility Plus, an all-aluminum body minibus, but it’s also the perfect platform for bus, truck, and vocational vehicle builders to place their bodies on,” the company adds.

Slow & Steady Wins The Race…To The US-Mexico Border

If all this activity from an EV-only automaker is beginning to sound like something you’ve heard before, you may be thinking of an article posted in CleanTechnica last week by editor Zachary Shahan, in which he invited Tesla fans to imagine how much excitement they could generate over the Intertubes if Tesla offered more than a dozen different models instead of a scant handful.

No such imaginary leap is necessary in the case of GreenPower. A quick stroll through the company’s website reveals four iterations of the BEAST electric school bus, and 14 different configurations of the EV Star electric trucks and vans, with the customize-able cab-and-chassis providing for additional variations, on top of the EV 250 bus, the EV350 bus, and two other versions of the electric bus, the EV 500 and EV550.

The big question is where does GreenPower go from here, given its rather limited track record in sales so far, and the answer is New Mexico.

In September last year, GreenPower announced that it has partnered with the New Mexico EDD (Economic Development Department) in a pilot project, consisting of six electric school buses deployed in Santa Fe and Las Vegas, New Mexico.

That was the tip of the New Mexico iceberg. GreenPower kicked off the New Year on January 8, when it announced a new agreement with EDD that will bring its EV manufacturing operations to the city of Santa Teresa.

“The new 135,000 sq. ft. facility in Santa Teresa will become the company’s base for North American operations and US corporate headquarters,” GreenPower emphasized.

“The company will receive a $5 million LEDA award from the state and $4.6 million in job training incentive funds (JTIP). The company also qualified for a $1.36 million Rural Jobs Tax Credit (RJTC) and $3.65 million as part of New Mexico’s High-Wage Jobs Tax Credit program,” they added.

In addition to the funding incentives, GreenPower also noted that Santa Teresa is a designated Foreign Trade Zone, a status it has held since 1993.

“The designation was a key factor in the company’s decision, offering streamlined customs and cost-effective trade that support efficient production and distribution of zero-emission vehicles across North America,” Greenpower notes. “The designation also provides access to the North American Development Bank, underscoring the project’s cross-border economic and environmental impact.”

More Electric Trucks, Vans, & Buses For The US

And, that’s where things get interesting. Last year the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas posted an interview with the president of the Border Industrial Association in Santa Teresa, Jerry Pacheco, who has been instrumental in promoting the Santa Teresa Port of Entry as an alternative to cross-border congestion at nearby El Paso, Texas.

Pacheco noted that when the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994, New Mexico had less trade with Mexico than non-border US states, including Delaware, Vermont, and Iowa. Breaking into the El Paso action was a long, hard slog, with the absence of paved roads among the obstacles. Still, a turning point occurred in 2009 when the Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn set up shop right across the border in Mexico, generating much more truck traffic into Santa Teresa. In 2014, the leading railway firm Union Pacific also pumped up the volume when it tapped the city for a major intermodal project.

“We parlayed off those two projects to attract a lot more industry,” Pacheco recounted. “[Foxconn] moved some EV [electric vehicle-related] production from China to San Jeronimo, which is right across the border from Santa Teresa.”

On the down side, Pacheco noted that Santa Teresa missed a series of new opportunities in 2025 as investors shied away from US President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff policy.

Also not helping to boost investor confidence is the President’s increasingly violent response to US citizens protesting his “crackdown” on illegal immigration, adding more fuel to a rapidly mounting pile of evidence that the agenda of the current occupant of the Oval Office is delusional, dangerously at odds with the welfare of the nation, or both.

US States Are Pushing The Fleet Electrification Movement

Despite the lost opportunities of 2025, New Mexico still has some powerful tools left in its economic development toolkit, including its decarbonization policy. Among the green elements is a mandate to transition the state’s vehicle fleet to zero-emissions by 2035, including more than 2,000 school buses and 3,500 other vehicles serving transit and other needs.

On its part, GreenPower will provide state agencies with dealer-level pricing for its Class 4 vehicles, including electric trucks of various sorts as well as passenger vans and buses.

Stay tuned for more decarbonization news from New Mexico. In addition to its ample wind and solar resources, New Mexico also hosts a potential 163 gigawatts (that’s gigawatts, not megawatts) of new geothermal energy resources, recoverable with advanced drilling technologies and other system improvements.

Photo: The Canadian electric truck, van, and bus maker GreenPower is setting up shop in New Mexico, with an eye on serving fleet electrification markets across North America and beyond (cropped, courtesy of GreenPower Motor).