What was claimed
The video shows an electric bus on fire in London’s clean air zone.
Our verdict
False. This shows a fire on a bus in Bradford that is believed to have been started deliberately. The bus is not electric.
Video does not show electric bus on fire in London
8 December 2023
Multiple online posts are sharing a video with claims it shows an electric bus on fire in London. But this is not true.
The video shows flames and a large cloud of smoke coming from a double decker bus paused at a bus stop. Posts across social media platforms, including Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok, claim the video shows an electric bus on fire in London’s “clean air zone”.
This may be a reference to either London’s Low Emission Zone or its Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). Full Fact has written about ULEZ multiple times before.
One post has the caption: “Electric bus fire in London. An inferno because of the lithium battery. And all that toxic smoke being breathed in. That’s a great idea for a so called clean air zone not. Electric vehicles are no good for the environment!!!”
But it’s not true that this video was filmed in London, or that it shows a fire caused by an electric bus.
The video shows an incident in the city centre of Bradford, Yorkshire, on 9 October. The bus had no passengers onboard at the time of the fire. A 15-year-old boy has been arrested for criminal damage and has been released on conditional bail.
A spokesperson for West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service told Full Fact: “The Fire Investigation Unit believed it was a deliberate ignition, which the police are investigating”.
While Bradford does have a clean air zone, a spokesperson for the bus company, First Bus, confirmed to us that the double-decker in the video is not electric. It appears to be one of Bradford’s 39 ultra-low emission buses which were introduced in 2022.
We have seen many false claims about electric vehicles in the past, including that a fire in a Luton Airport car park started with an electric vehicle, false claims that a video shows electric vehicle chargers operated by a diesel generator and incorrect claims on social media that an electric vehicle will self-charge as it drives by attaching a generator to the wheel to harness the energy.
Image courtesy of Tim Green
Correction 6 February 2024
We updated this article to correct a typo in the claim box.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the video shows a bus on fire in Bradford that is believed to have been started deliberately and is not electric.