A video of a car explosion is being widely shared across social media platforms with a claim it shows electric car explosion while charging. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Visuals showing explosion of an electric car while charging.
Fact: The visuals show an explosion of a car due to the gas cylinder fitted in the car. The incident took place earlier on 26 February 2023 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Multiple news agencies and Uzbekistan’s emergency department acknowledged that the explosion was due to gas cylinder. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
The visuals shared in the viral post indeed show a recent car explosion. However, it is a LPG cylinder, that caused the explosion, not charging of electric battery, as claimed.
Reverse image search of the screenshots of the video, led us to Turkish news article, dated 01 March 2023, that reported the same visuals. As per the article, the incident reportedly happened in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
The article reported that the explosion happened while refueling the LPG cylinder of the car. The man seen hit by the debris is reportedly dead. Further search yielded a few Uzbek news articles (here & here), which confirmed the explosion of the gas cylinder as the cause of the accident. And as per these reports, the incident took place on 25 February 2023.
Department of Emergency Situations of Samarkand region, also acknowledged the incident as an explosion of gas cylinder installed in the car.
Hence, these reports establish that it is not charging of an electric vehicle which led to the explosion, but the refuelling of gas cylinder of the car.
To sum it up, these visuals show the explosion of a car fitted with a gas cylinder, not of a electric car.
