The vlogger was ordered to publish an apology on his channel and pay Nio financial damages of RMB 80,000 yuan ($11,640).
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Nio (NYSE: NIO) has won a lawsuit involving reputation infringement in China, in one of the company's rare tough moves.
Laotan Shuoche (literally, Mr. Tan talks about cars), a vlogger on the short-video platform Douyin, was ruled to have infringed on Nio's reputation and was required to publish an apology on his channel and pay financial damages of RMB 80,000 yuan ($11,640).
The vlogger had called Nio's vehicles uncontrolled "wild horses" on his channel and blamed an accident on the quality of Nio's vehicle, even though traffic police authorities had confirmed that the accident was caused by the driver's mishandling, several local media said, citing a verdict.
The vlogger spliced multiple unverified collision videos to cause damage to Nio's reputation by distorting the facts while gaining viewers, according to the verdict, which is final.
Last February, an Nio vehicle was rear-ended on a highway in Jinhua, Zhejiang province in eastern China, and eventually crashed into three other vehicles before coming to a stop after driving forward for about 2 kilometers.
Laotan has apologized to Nio by posting a video on his Douyin account, which showed that he posted the video on the accident on February 16, 2022.
In China, Nio has always been seen as showing caution and restraint in dealing with similar issues, rather than being as aggressive as Tesla.
A few years ago, a video by a blogger criticizing Nio gained high attention. However, his video was not seen as an infringement of Nio's reputation, and he himself became one of the earliest owners of the ET7.
On June 30, 2022, car blogger @一个菜两个菜, who has more than 1 million followers on Weibo, said he purchased an ET7, a model that only started to be delivered at the end of March last year.
The blogger claimed in a video posted on January 28, 2019, that there is no future for Nio and explained his view in detail.
He claimed in the video at the time that Nio was playing a game of quick money through the capital markets and was not capable of building cars.
($1= RMB 6.8707)
Blogger who said Nio had no future three years ago becomes one of the first ET7 owners
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