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An investor group involving Montreal real estate tycoon Vincent Chiara is set to take control of bankrupt Lion Electric, offering new capital to keep the electric bus and truck maker alive.

Damera, an Ontario-based electric bus company, plans to invest $31.5 million and create 90 full-time jobs to open its first U.S. assembly plant in Peoria, Ill.

A court-appointed monitor says there is a “very high” likelihood that electric truck and bus maker Lion Electric will be liquidated.

Days after laying off 400 staff and halting production at its Joliet, Ill., bus manufacturing plant, Lion continued its ongoing fundraising push with the building sale.

Mach Capital, the investment arm of Canadian real estate developer Groupe Mach, is in discussions to provide more funding to cash-strapped electric bus and truck manufacturer Lion Electric.

Canadian medium- and heavy-duty electric truck and bus maker Lion Electric laid off 150 employees, or 10% of its workforce, it said Nov. 27.

All over the world, buses are quickly and quietly going electric.

Nearly 400 school districts spanning all 50 states and Washington, D.C., along with several tribes and U.S. territories, are receiving roughly $1 billion in grants to purchase about 2,500 “clean” school buses under a new federal program.

Democratic lawmakers are unveiling legislation that would invest $25 billion to convert the nation’s fleet of gasoline- and diesel-powered school buses to electric vehicles, aiming at a component of President Joe Biden’s $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan to improve children’s health.

The 100-year-old over-the-road motorcoach industry is struggling for survival as most of the nation’s 36,000 buses are sitting in parking lots because of the COVID-19 pandemic.