Great Britain. An electric bus burns in London’s clean transport zone? Two lies at once

They are shared en masse on social media, as well as on Polish language profiles videoWhich shows a double-decker bus burning in the city. Flames and thick clouds of smoke rose from the car, almost filling the space between the two buildings, where the bus was most likely parked at the bus stop. Most of the netizens who posted this recording claim that it is an electric bus. They claim it caught fire in London, in the Transport Clean Zone, that is, an area within the city that can only be entered by vehicles powered by environmental energy, such as electric, hydrogen or compressed natural gas vehicles.

Opponents of such city areas and electric cars themselves mocked the idea of ​​eco-transportation by publishing the film. “London. Clean transport zone. Electric bus launched Eco mode”; “Eco sreko won’t go away. Electric bus in London’s ‘clean transport zone’ yesterday”; “Enjoy the clean air in London’s clean transport zone! Thank you, Sadiq Khan (Mayor of London – editor)”; “Ladies and gentlemen. This is how green energy delivers an electric bus in London’s clean transport zone”; “And they have their own super-eco electric cars”, “What fresh air. Perfect for breathing. It’s a pure ecological environment”; “One bus polluted the air so much that the entire diesel fleet would not do so in a year. Fake environment” – there were a lot of similar comments on the Facebook and X platforms.

Videos of a burning bus go viral; A Polish Facebook post received two million views, and videos on the X platform garnered several hundred shares.

However, posts like the one mentioned above are another example of misinformation aimed at discrediting electric cars. Because the bus that appears in the recording is not electric, and the film is not from London at all.

Checking this registration is not complicated: just enter two keywords into the Google search engine: “bus” and “fire” (ie: bus and fire) to get results like film Titled ‘The Burning Bradford Bus Wasn’t Electric’ or condition BBC portal: “The fire brigade extinguished a bus fire in Bradford city centre.”

From these materials we can learn that the burned bus did not have an electric motor, but only a diesel engine, that is, the famous diesel engine. Specifically, it is the StreetDeck Ultroliner EU6 model. on Official Website Its manufacturer writes that it “offers the cleanest diesel engine in its class and strictly complies with the latest EU6 exhaust emission standards.”

Moreover, the bus caught fire not in London, but in Bradford – a city in West Yorkshire located more than 300 kilometers from the capital of Great Britain. Based on the fragments of buildings shown in the video, it can be confirmed that the bus caught fire while parked on Broadway Street near the main square in Bradford.

W condition The BBC reported that a fire broke out on the upper deck of bus 607 on the afternoon of Monday, October 9. Three fire brigades were called to the scene and were able to extinguish the fire. No one was harmed as the fire broke out after the bus reached its final stop and disembarked the passengers. It is not known what caused the ignition and whether it was related to the bus engine, and services will only determine it based on surveillance recordings. There is no information in the text that the bus will be electric.

In Bradford city centre righteous A clean transport area, but not very restrictive as it does not apply to, among others, passenger cars and motorcycles. Light trucks and vans that do not meet exhaust emission standards can enter the area after paying a fee. Buses like the one shown in the video can also operate in the area because they meet exhaust emissions standards.

This fake news is another example of a recording in which a combustion car fire appears to be an electric car ignition. For example, in April 2022, we at Konkret24 described a recording titled “What happens to an electric bus when its batteries burn out?”. It showed a bus with flames erupting from it, but contrary to the description, the car was not electric, but rather powered by methane gas.

Authors of false messages about electric vehicles want to convince recipients that such vehicles are dangerous, difficult to extinguish, and emit large amounts of pollutants during fires. As in the case of the video from Bradford, it is always worth checking whether the spectacular fire of a particular “electric” car is not the fire of an ordinary combustion car.