Claim: A viral video shows a man walking into an elevator with an e-bike battery, which almost instantly bursts into flames, causing an explosion inside the lift. In the latter half of the video, the same man can be seen being dragged out of the elevator, unconscious and almost completely covered with burn marks.
Fact: The incident shown in the video occurred in Guangzhou, China in 2021, according to several Chinese news websites. The National Fire and Rescue Bureau of China claimed that illegal charging, or modifying or replacing of batteries could be a reason why the battery exploded, and not because it turned the elevator into a giant electromagnetic field.
From 24 July 2024, several videos appeared on Facebook, showing a man entering an elevator with a device, which almost instantly bursts into flames. The video was also shared on WhatsApp, labelled “Forwarded many times”, with the following caption:
“A person brings the e-bike battery into the lift. When the lift closes, the electro-charge of the battery turns the whole lift into a magnetic battery. Be careful and share with family and friends !!”
Fact or Fiction?
Through reverse image search, we found that many Mandarin-language websites recently shared the video. Soch Fact Check also conducted keyword searches for the story mentioned in the claim, which led to a Reddit thread which starts with the following post:
“A Chinese man brought an electric bike’s lithium-ion battery into an elevator, which immediately started to self-ignite after the door closed.”
One of the replies mentions an article, published on 2 November 2021, to the Chinese-language website, The Paper. The report repeats the story of the Chinese man entering an elevator with an electric bike’s lithium battery and that it instantly erupted into flames, the same video also appears later in the article, although grainier. Another Chinese news website published a similar article on 2 November 2021.
Upon further research, we found that some websites have shared this video recently as well. According to this article, the incident occurred in Guangzhou, China. “At that time, the man in the picture was taking the hot electric vehicle battery outdoors to dissipate heat. As a result, the battery exploded not long after entering the elevator. Afterwards, the local fire station pointed out that the cause of the fire was thermal runaway of the lithium battery of the electric bicycle.”, the article states.
The article also reports that the man shown in the video suffered multiple flame burns all over his body, receiving an inhalation injury, acute kidney injury, and burns to his left eye. The article goes on to state that he died of acute myocardial infarction on 3 November 2021.
According to another report from another Chinese news website, the National Fire and Rescue Bureau of China claimed that illegal charging, modification or replacement of batteries could be a reason why the battery exploded, and not because it turned the elevator into a giant electromagnetic field. The article quotes He Penglin, Deputy Director of the Safety Technology Research Center of the China Institute of Electronics Standardization, as saying that the charging voltage of various kinds of electric bike batteries are very different, and it is easy for them to be mixed during the modification process, which could result in overcharging, which in turn causes fire and explosion, such as the 2021 case.
This means that the battery was indeed going to explode and entering the elevator at that exact moment made it impossible for the man to run away from an exploding battery and reach a safe distance. The elevator did not cause the explosion, but it prevented the man from saving himself, urgently.
It is also important to note that electromagnetic fields can only be generated when an electric charge is flowing, which means it can only occur when a battery is being charged. The man in the video was clearly not charging his battery as he entered the elevator. However, even if he was, these magnetic fields are weak and not strong enough to cause an explosion.
Virality
We searched for the video on Facebook using the keywords “e-bike”, “battery”, and “lift”, and found that currently 3,200 people are talking about this video.
On Facebook it was shared here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Conclusion: Electric bike batteries do not immediately combust once brought inside a lift.
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Background image in cover photo: Himiway
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