The latest personnel move related to the Lion Electric Company monetary issues is Nicolas Brunet, who the company announced is resigned as president 14 months after he was tapped for the position.
Lion made no formal announcement, with a note indicating Brunet was leaving the company immediately tucked away on the second to last page of an SEC filing dated Dec. 1. That same day, the company announced it was halting production at its Joliet, Illinois, factory and was laying over 400 workers.
Lion has until Dec. 16 to pay back four creditors unless it can secure additional investments or find a company to purchase it.
Brunet joined the company headquartered in Saint-Jerome, Quebec, in 2019 and was executive vice president and CFO before being named president on Sept. 28, 2023.
A company spokesperson declined to comment on Wednesday on Brunet’s departure but added that Marc Bedard remains chief executive officer. Bedard founded Lion Electric as Autobus Lion, or Lion Bus, in 2008 after previously serving as an executive for Type A school bus manufacturer Corbeil, which closed the previous year.
Lion’s first school bus was the Lion 360 in 2011, a diesel Type C model developed in partnership with Spartan Chassis. The company transitioned to only manufacturing electric school buses and rebranded itself as Lion Electric in 2017. Two years later it began manufacturing electric trucks.
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