Electric school bus fires spark misinformation about low-emission vehicle safety

"Governments in Canada have given this failing company hundreds of millions of your dollars in climate grants but the buses keep catching on fire," a September 12, 2025 post on Facebook featuring a photo of flames engulfing a yellow school bus.

The same photo featured in a post questioning why the Liberal federal government wants "us all to switch to EV's."

Following a September 9 Montreal, Quebec bus fire, similar sentiment spread on social media and in blog posts evoking prior fires in the same electric models to denounce low-emission goals and accuse Canada's leaders of failing to prioritize "children's safety."

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Screenshot of a Facebook post taken October 8, 2025

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Screenshot of a Facebook post taken October 8, 2025

As part of a push to fortify low-emissions manufacturing in Canada, Quebec province pledged millions of dollars to electrify its school bus fleet in 2022, giving preference to local company Lion Electric.

After the most recent fire, Quebec temporarily pulled 1,200 of the manufacturer's buses from service.

Lion Electric said in a September 12 statement that it was working with Transport Canada to determine the exact cause but confirmed "neither the electric battery nor the propulsion system was involved" (archived here).

The company also said the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec approved its plan to return its electric school buses to service.

Transport Canada said in a September 19 statement that a safety defect in the LionC model had not been identified yet "due to the extent of fire damage in affected buses" but that the focus is on issues with the low-voltage heating system (archived here).

Montreal fire department spokesman Guy Lapointe told AFP on October 8 that the September 9 fire did not involve the electric bus's battery.

Valerie Tremblay (archived here), sustainable mobility lead for climate non-profit Green Communities Canada, told AFP September 23 that "electric bus fire incidents deserve attention, but they are rare."

She said most of the fires seen in the past year were linked either to the HVAC wiring or the heating and defrosting system, components she said operate similarly across electric and traditional combustion buses.

While batteries can malfunction and cause fires, she said electric vehicles were not more at risk than those using diesel and gas, which can also be flammable.

Different challenges

Kate Whitefoot, a mechanical engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University (archived here), cautioned that she had not seen enough evidence to establish that electric vehicles were safer than gas-powered ones, but said she was confident in them having at least similar rates of fire risk.

"And that looks the same across all types of vehicles. So including buses, as well as passenger vehicles," she told AFP on September 24, referencing multiple investigations.

AFP located a Chinese study which found electric car fire incidents to be comparable or lower to those in traditional gas-powered vehicles (archived here).

A paper from Sweden also reported a minuscule percentage of the country's electric fleet caught fire between 2018 and 2024, lower than the numbers reported in other types of vehicles (archived here).

The company AutoinsuranceEZ similarly analyzed recall statistics and data from the American National Transportation Safety Board, finding that 25 electric vehicle fires occurred for 100,000 automobiles sold. Meanwhile, hybrid- and gas-powered vehicles burned at rates of 3,475 and 1,530 per 100,000 sales, respectively (archived here).

The National Fire Protection Association, a US-based non-profit, also reports "there are fewer electric vehicle fires" but that more research is needed to understand the fire safety challenges unique to electric vehicles (archived here).

Most electric vehicles, including buses, are powered by lithium-ion batteries.

When fires occur, the batteries can enter a state known as thermal runaway (archived here), where the cells overheat. Blazes with a chemical origin can burn much more intensely and be more difficult to put out.

In the case of traditional gas-powered vehicles however, Whitefoot said the risk for conflagration comes into play with the flammable fuel used to power the engine.

Both Whitefoot and Tremblay noted that electric school buses could also be beneficial to students as they reduce exposure to toxic fumes (archived here).

Despite a pause on the country's electric vehicle mandate, Prime Minister Mark Carney's ruling Liberal Party aims to decarbonize Canada's transportation sector for new vehicles by 2035 (archived here).

Opponents of the policy deem the target impractical (archived here) and the scheme has already been a source of misinformation.

AFP has also fact-checked other claims on EVs and fires here and here.