A metal bracket rubbing against a misrouted wiring harness can cut all drive power on 81 Micro Bird G5e electric school buses built for the 2025 and 2026 model years, according to a recall notice filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Micro Bird USA says the defect can leave a bus without propulsion in the middle of a route, and the company has begun free repairs on every affected unit rather than waiting for a failure to force the issue. Electric school buses have spread quickly through U.S. districts over the past several years, pitched to school boards as quieter, cheaper to run and free of tailpipe exhaust around children, which makes a defect capable of killing a bus’s drive system mid-route an unusually pointed setback for a technology still trying to prove itself on daily routes.
NHTSA’s recall record describes the defect in mechanical terms. A wiring harness inside the bus was routed incorrectly during assembly, and over time a nearby metal bracket can rub against it and wear through the insulation. The resulting wear can sever the connection that carries power to the drive system, and the agency’s consequence summary is blunt about what follows: a loss of driving power raises the risk of a crash, whether the bus is moving through traffic or idling at a stop with children still boarding.
A bracket that rubs through a misrouted harness
NHTSA’s defect description says a wiring harness “may have been incorrectly routed” during production, and that a metal bracket “may contact and damage the harness, causing a loss of drive power.” The recall, filed under campaign number 26V591, covers 81 of the electric G5e buses built across the 2025 and 2026 model years, all assembled with the same routing error somewhere on the line before anyone caught it.
Three recalls, 281 buses, one wiring flaw
The 81-bus recall is not the only one addressing this defect. On the same day, Micro Bird filed a second recall covering 197 additional G5e buses with an identical defect description, this one filed under the name Corp. Micro Bird, Inc. rather than Micro Bird USA LLC. A third filing, campaign 26V593, adds three more G5e transit buses built to the same specification.
Combined, the three campaigns put 281 buses carrying the same misrouted harness on notice, even though NHTSA tracks them as three separate recalls rather than one. Only the 81 covered by 26V591 are the electric school buses at the center of this notice; the other two campaigns cover a transit-configured variant and a batch attributed to Micro Bird’s Canadian corporate entity, a distinction that matters for the paperwork even though the wiring problem itself is identical across all three. NHTSA’s database treats a manufacturer’s U.S. subsidiary and its Canadian parent as separate reporting entities even when a single production error runs through both companies’ vehicles, which is why one wiring mistake generated three campaign numbers instead of one combined recall covering all 281 buses at once.
None of the three notices reports an injury tied to the defect so far.
Built in Plattsburgh, not Quebec
The split between corporate names traces back to where the buses were assembled. Micro Bird USA LLC operates a 156,000-square-foot plant in Plattsburgh, New York, a former Nova Bus facility the company bought for 38 million dollars and converted into its first domestic production line in fifteen years, with production ramping from five buses a day toward a planned 15. Micro Bird itself is a joint venture between Blue Bird and Quebec’s Girardin Minibus, which continues building G5e buses at its longtime Canadian plant alongside the newer New York facility. The Plattsburgh plant is built to comply with the Buy America Act, a requirement for buses purchased with certain federal and state clean-transportation funding, and its opening was framed at the time as the first U.S.-manufactured Micro Bird in fifteen years rather than as a response to any defect.
The timing puts the recalled buses squarely inside the company’s push to scale up domestic production just as electric models were becoming a larger share of what districts ordered.
Free fixes and a mid-November mailing
The recall surfaced publicly as part of a broader batch of NHTSA actions that week, alongside unrelated campaigns from larger automakers and RV manufacturers. Micro Bird will inspect, replace and properly secure the wiring harness on each of the 81 buses at no cost to the school districts that operate them, and the company has scheduled owner notification letters for around November 10, 2026, with recall number 26-122-HVC printed on the paperwork districts will need on file.
Until those letters arrive, the 81 buses covered by campaign 26V591 remain in service on whatever routes their districts have assigned them, carrying the same misrouted harness NHTSA says has been identified in every one of them but not yet physically repaired.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
More from Morning Overview
- A handful of car engines are so tough mechanics say they almost never wear out
- The NSA is again telling phone owners to switch off one location setting
- Supplements now rank as the fifth-leading cause of death from liver disease.
- Herbal supplements are landing Americans in the hospital with liver damage, doctors warn
