In just a month, two vehicular fires incident occurred on vehicles belonging to the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP). The latest took place on Friday, April 29 in the morning in Paris.
The RATP has decided to withdraw 149 buses from circulation, i.e. almost a third of its fleet of electric buses.
The electric bus is parked, empty, when suddenly it bursts into flames in the middle of the street. Within seconds, he was devoured by the flames. It is a spectacular scene in the heart of the XIIIth arrondissement of the capital, Friday April 29.
In the now-viral video, we can see the carcass of the vehicle burning, from which emerges an impressive plume of smoke.
Watch it here: Vixx/Youtube
Barely a month ago, already in Paris, an electric bus of the same model also went up in smoke. After this series of incidents, the RATP takes a radical decision.
Nicolas Cartier, director of bus maintenance at RATP, said in a statement:
“We decided immediately to withdraw these buses from operation.”
Two fires in one month. Is there a failure of Bolloré electric buses? The group says it is investigating. After these fires, no injuries were reported.
The RATP has requested the manufacturer to carry out a full investigation to explain the causes of the fire and provide the RATP with an action plan to bring the electric buses safely back into operation.
More details of this incident from The Western Journal report:
The two fires in Paris and similar incidents worldwide have raised concerns about the safety of electric vehicles amid a push toward making them replace those running on fossil fuels by activists and lawmakers.
The government of India last month urged electric motorcycle companies operating in the country to carry out voluntary recalls of their products.
The country’s authorities did so to ensure electric motorcycles were safe for consumers after a series of electric scooters caught fire in the country, the Indian newspaper The Hindu reported.
“Lithium has a natural affinity for fires,’’ Amit Das, the founder of the Indian multi-brand electric vehicle store chain Electric One, said, according to the Business Standard. Lithium is a common element in electric vehicle batteries.
Battery fires in electric vehicles, according to Forbes, can happen due to two reasons
One is a car crash that damages individual cells in the battery, which can eventually lead to a fire engulfing other cells and subsequently the entire automobile. This, according to Forbes, was the issue with early Teslas. The other reason is manufacturing defects.
The outlet commented further on the safety concerns electric vehicles are facing:
Besides safety concerns, electric vehicles face other sets of problems, such as governments adding new taxes to compensate for revenue losses that came with incentives given to motorists for switching from gas-powered vehicles to electric ones.
On top of that are ethical concerns that arise due to the nature of the process of mining raw materials to make electric vehicles and the emissions involved therein.
Sources: TheWesternJournal, Forbes, The Hindu, Business Standard