Paris suspends electric bus fleet after two fires in weeks

PARIS has suspended a fleet of 149 electric buses after two of them caught fire in less than a month.

Firefighters attended when a bus caught fire on the Boulevard Saintgermain on April 4, sending thick black smoke billowing above central Paris.

Another fire started at around 8am on Friday near the François-mitterrand library in the city’s 13th arrondissement and required a team of 30 firefighters to put out the blaze.

“The bus driver immediately evacuated all the passengers,” said RATP, the city’s public transport operator. No one was injured in either incident.

RATP said the decision to temporarily recall the buses was a “precaution” while manufacturer Bluebus, part of Bolloré group, conducted an analysis “to see where the fire came from”.

Ile-de-france Mobilités, the regional transport authority, asked RATP to “shed all light” on the fires and “take all necessary precautionary measures”, according to a company spokesman.

According to the Bolloré group, both fires started at the roof level, where the lithium batteries are held.

Battery fires can be a serious problem for electric vehicles, which run on highly flammable lithium and electrolytes. Last year, Detroit-based car manufacturer General Motors was forced to replace the lithium batteries in 141,000 vehicles after several caught fire.

Dozens of electric buses were taken out of circulation in Germany last September after one caught fire in Stuttgart.

Bolloré said it wanted to wait until its internal analysis was finalised “before blaming its lithium batteries”.

The buses make up a third of the city’s entire electric bus fleet and the RATP insisted any problem was with Bolloré’s vehicles and not electric buses generally.

“Electric buses aren’t the issue here, Bolloré buses of this model are the issue,” a spokesman said.

He added that city has been using electric buses since 2016 and now has a fleet of 500 in circulation.