BEIJING: Chinese electric carmaker Nio has been caught up in public scrutiny over an accident in Shanghai which the company said has nothing to do with the car itself.
On Wednesday afternoon, one Nio test vehicle fell from the third floor of an office building in the Auto Innovation Park in Jiading district, killing the two people inside.
Videos of firefighters trying to rescue people from the sedan been have circulating on social media platform Sina Weibo since then, and judging from the car’s features in the pictures, the vehicle being tested was likely to be Nio ET5/7 model series.
The ET5 model was put on the market in December, while the first batch of ET7 models was delivered to customers in March.
The company issued a notice on Thursday evening which confirmed the accident and the deaths of two in-car testers — one is an employee with Nio and the other is an employee with a partner company.
“The company was deeply grieved over the accident and has sent condolence to the families of the deceased.
We have formed a special team to help them deal with the aftermath,” Nio said on its official account on Sina Weibo.
“We have immediately assisted the police in the investigation into the cause of the accident. Based on preliminary analysis, we deemed that the accident has nothing to do with the vehicle itself,” it said.
–The Daily Mail-China Daily news exhange item
