Do you remember Dancer Bus? The Lithuanian Oem (Vėjo projektai consortium) had landed on the market in 2018 with a revolutionary bus: transparent and wind-powered. Then, in 2023, at Busworld in Brussels, it was back to make headlines with another very special vehicle: a 12-meter electric, with an unladen weight of just 8.6 tons, thanks to a strong and lightweight composite body made from plastic also collected in the oceans.
Lo and behold, unfortunately, the Lithuanian Oem has declared bankruptcy. The official announcement came on Linkedin, with a post by founder Alvydas Naujekas. A lightning bolt out of the blue? Almost, since from Busworld 2023 2023 to date there had been no particular news, neither of new products, nor of orders and deliveries from Dancer Bus, despite the company’s proclamations and plans, such as the construction of a new factory that would allow the assembly of more than 500 pieces per year.
Why Dancer Bus is bankrupt?
The pandemic hit Dancer Bus hard, and a key step came in 2022, when – as reported by the Ukrainian media ain – the company turned to the investment fund NuCapital for a 1.8 million euro loan; a loan granted until July 2025 and obtained by pledging the factory as collateral.
According to what Naujekas wrote, it was NuCapital that caused Dancer Bus to go bankrupt. The fund, however, returned the accusations to the sender, saying it was simply working to recover the loaned capital.
I have worked at this company three years ago. I left when it started going downhill. I received my last paycheck and two weeks later my former colleagues didn’t get their salaries.
I don’t believe that it was COVID that broke them, but gross mismanagement from incompetence from their executives, which were also overpaid and overrepresented in the company structure. They also lacked any experience working in automotive field and failed to attract experienced engineering talent into the company.
The engineers were underpaid and overworked in comparison. A handful of experienced automotive people cut have cut off the development time by years.
They also had to innovate to attract money and raise stock value. However, to build reliable busses, a minimum viable e-bus would have been much better, because they could have learned what works and what doesn’t without spending millions on redesigning various parts several times.
They used a superlight composite material to shave off tons of weight, but that material proved too stiff as a bus body and a nightmare to work with. Their solution ended up being even more of said material.
Wind-powered… how?
They owned a wind power park and used the electricity generated by it to power the buses.
