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Montreal-based Lion Electric to lay off 300 more employees as bus company scales back production

Click to play video: 'Quebec, Ottawa to inject $100M for Montreal-are electric vehicle battery plant'
Quebec, Ottawa to inject $100M for Montreal-are electric vehicle battery plant
RELATED: Quebec Premier François Legault and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met in Montreal on Monday to jointly announce funding for a battery plant project by Saint-Jérôme-based battery manufacturer Lion electric. As Global's Tim Sargeant explains, the plant will produce batteries that will be used in electric buses and trucks, which will help reduce Quebec's dependency on fossil fuels – Mar 15, 2021

Lion Electric Co. says it is laying off hundreds more workers as part of a plan to staunch its financial losses.

The electric bus company says some 300 employees will be let go in the coming days in a 30 per cent cut to its workforce. It expects most of the layoffs to be temporary.

Lion Electric previously laid off about 220 employees in a pair of announcements in February and April.

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The Montreal-based company says the layoffs are part of a plan to better align its costs with current demand. The plan also involves ramping down production of electric trucks, creating a new product line to sell its battery packs to third parties and potentially leasing out a big chunk of its plant in Joliet, Ill.

The announcement comes as the company reported net losses that ballooned 63 per cent to US$19.3 million in the second quarter and a 48 per cent drop in revenue to US$30.3 million compared with the year before.

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In the three months ended June 30, Lion Electric says it delivered 101 vehicles — a drop of nearly 50 per cent year-over-year — and a diluted loss of nine cents per share versus a loss of five cents per share a year earlier, beating analysts expectations.

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