Two workers died when a Nio electric car fell from the third floor of its headquarters in China, Shanghai. Chinese electric carmaker Nio says the only member of staff and a person from the partner company died. It took place on Wednesday. According to the firm, the people were inside the car when the vehicle fell from the building.
Third storey area from where the Car fell
The company says it immediately started an investigation into the incident. Also in cooperation with government officials. The car was in the third storey which is described as a showroom or car park.
The company said in a statement “Our company has collaborated with the public security department to launch the investigation, analysis of the cause of the accident. Based on the analysis of the situation at the scene, we can initially confirm that this was an accident (not caused by the vehicle),”
Further added, “We feel very sad about this accident. We would like to express our deepest condolences to our colleague and partner employee who lost their lives. A team has been set up to help the families,”
It shows the cold blood of capitalism
Nio gave an initial statement on Weibo, more than 1000 people commented within an hour. which led Nio to take it down.
The ending of the statement “not related to the vehicle itself” triggered many angry responses from social media users.
One comment read “it shows the cold blood of capitalism”, while another said, “the last sentence is so indifferent. They [test drivers] came to test the vehicle, but you say [the accident] has nothing to do with the vehicle?”.
Yet another user said: “It should be the public security bureau to confirm if it’s an accident or not.”
The carmaker has since posted a revised version of the statement. That still refers to the crash as an accident. However, now has “not caused by the vehicle” in brackets apparently to de-emphasise that part of the sentence. All the comments to the new post are now “RIP”.
Nio dominates China’s homegrown drive in the electric car industry. It has staked a lot on interchangeable batteries in its cars as a way to overcome customer concerns about frequent charging.
The company is a rival to multi-billionaire and famous Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s US-based electric car maker Tesla, which has a major manufacturing plant in China, Shanghai.
