FALSE: This image does not show an electric car cemetery in France
A reverse image search reveals that the image shows cars belonging to a Chinese rideshare company parked in Hangzhou, Zhejiang.
A Facebook is post with an image purporting to show an electric car cemetery in France is FALSE.
A similar post has been shared on Facebook here, with a caption that reads, “Come let’s go here. Here is an electric car cemetery in France. Nobody wants to buy a used electric car when the battery is out”.
A reverse image search, however, reveals that similar images were published by a Chinese state-owned newspaper People’s Daily.
“This is the shared car ‘cemetery’” the Chinese news agency wrote on their website on 25 April 2019, describing the scene as showing 3,000 new energy vehicles. The photo runs alongside a series of others taken from different angles, all parked along the Qiantang River. The caption attributes the images to Chinanews.
A further look into the Facebook post reveals a partial logo on the side of the cars is similar to the logo on the images shared by the Chinese news agency.
The cars in the Facebook post, as well as those provided by Chinanews, possess similar logos, along with white, green and blue paint.
A Google search reveals that the cars were manufactured by China’s Kandi Technologies Group, through a joint venture with Zhejiang Geely Holding Group.
The cars belong to a Hangzhou-based electric car rideshare company, Microcity, a subsidiary of electric car rental company Zhejiang Zuozhongyou Electric Car Service Limited.
“The cars in the photo belonged to Hangzhou Microcity,” the company’s former brand manager, Lou Gaofeng, told Agence France-Presse in an article as seen here.
PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post bearing an image purporting to be of an electric car cemetery in France and finds it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Cynthia Ilako and edited by PesaCheck chief copy editor Rose Lukalo. The article was approved for publication by managing editor Enock Nyariki.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.
