Nio Inc. said on Friday that it is facing a smear campaign of online rumors and defamatory content aimed at the company, its Onvo sub-brand, and people featured in its promotional materials.
The move is the latest in a long-running legal offensive by the Shanghai-based EV maker against online disinformation.
Last month, Nio reported that Chinese police had arrested a suspect who used AI-powered tools to spread fabricated content about the company through more than 4,000 social media accounts, accumulating over 80 million views.
The EV maker has also won multiple civil defamation lawsuits against content creators and bloggers over the past year, with courts ordering compensation and public apologies in several cases.
Nio‘s legal department maintains a dedicated Weibo account to publicly track each case.
The statement was published just a day after Nio released its first-quarter 2026 financial results.
“Our company has preserved relevant evidence of infringement and reported the matter to public security authorities. The authorities have officially accepted the case,” the statement read.
Nio said it “will firmly pursue legal action, hold the infringing parties legally accountable, defend fair competition within the industry, and help maintain a clean online environment.”
The Actor Controversy
The first incident cited in the statement involves fabricated claims that an actress appearing in a promotional video for the Onvo brand was the lead actress from the controversial Chinese film ‘监狱来的妈妈,’ known in English as Mother from Prison.
The film, directed by Qin Xiaoyu, stars Zhao Xiaohong, who plays a fictionalized version of herself.
In the movie, her character is portrayed as a woman who killed her abusive husband in self-defense and later attempts to rebuild her life after serving a prison sentence.
The film premiered at the 73rd San Sebastián International Film Festival in September 2025, where Zhao won the Silver Shell for Best Leading Performance.
However, the film has since become the center of a national controversy in China.
Court documents from the Shaanxi High People’s Court describe the 2009 incident as intentional injury resulting from a marital dispute, with no legal recognition of domestic violence — contradicting the film’s narrative of self-defense against an abusive partner.
Additional allegations emerged that Zhao may have participated in the film’s production while still serving her prison sentence, raising concerns about procedural violations.
The backlash led to the film’s scheduled May 30 theatrical release being pulled, its lead actress’s social media accounts being restricted, and China’s National Film Administration launching an investigation.
Against that backdrop, online accounts began circulating claims that the actress who appeared in an Onvo L80 promotional video was Zhao Xiaohong.
Nio said it had “already refuted these claims through multiple channels, and the information is seriously inconsistent with the facts.”
Despite the clarification, “numerous accounts — including ‘Peterburg’s Fat Swan’ — continued to repost and spread the rumors, attempting to stir up public opinion and launch malicious attacks against Nio, the Onvo brand, and the actors involved,” the company wrote.
Battery Swap and Sales Data
The second category of attacks cited by Nio targets its battery swap infrastructure and multi-brand business strategy.
According to the statement, “the online account ‘Aotou Finance’ published multiple articles about Nio across various platforms, citing incorrect sales data and maliciously fabricating the number of battery swap station failures, while attacking Nio‘s battery swap infrastructure and its multi-brand business strategy.”
The company said the articles “were widely reposted and commented on, causing serious harm to Nio.”
The company described the content as part of a pattern of deliberate misinformation rather than genuine reporting errors.
The claims come at a sensitive time for Nio‘s swap network.
The company has faced repeated delays in rolling out its fifth-generation battery swap stations, which were originally expected to begin pilot deployment before Christmas 2025.
The timeline was subsequently pushed to the first quarter of 2026, then second, and most recently to July–August 2026 for mass deployment, with five to ten pioneer stations planned for trial operations between May and June.
The fifth-generation stations represent a ground-up redesign, increasing battery slot capacity to between 21 and 28 units, raising daily service capacity to up to 500 vehicles, and cutting minimum swap time to one minute and 48 seconds.
Nio has maintained its target of adding 1,000 new stations in 2026 and 3,000 through 2028 — though the pace of construction this year is expected to be heavily back-loaded into the third quarter.
The first fifth-generation under testing was seen in Kunshan last week, in line with the revised pioneer deployment timeline.
Product Launches in Focus
The timing of the statement is not coincidental.
Nio is in the middle of an intensive product offensive designed to reverse a period of delivery softness in April and drive growth through the second quarter.
The company characterized both incidents as “illegal acts of malicious rumor-spreading, defamation, and attacks against Nio and related individuals.”
The EV maker noted that “multiple new models under Nio, including the Onvo L80 and the Nio ES9, have either recently launched or are about to launch, and have received positive market feedback.”
The Onvo L80, the sub-brand’s third model, officially launched on May 15 — the brand’s second anniversary — with prices starting at 242,800 yuan, 3,000 yuan below the pre-sale figure.
Customer deliveries began the following day across 16 cities, with more than 1,000 display and test-drive vehicles deployed to Onvo showrooms nationwide.
Under the BaaS battery rental arrangement, the entry price drops to 156,800 yuan, undercutting Tesla’s Model Y by approximately 17,700 yuan at the retail level.
On May 27, Nio will officially launch and begin deliveries of its flagship ES9 executive SUV.
The full-size electric SUV is built on the NT3.0 platform, features a 5.3-meter body length and 3.25-meter wheelbase, and runs on a 900V high-voltage architecture with the SkyRide intelligent chassis system.
Pre-sale pricing starts at 528,000 yuan with the battery pack included, or 420,000 yuan under the BaaS model, with a Signature Edition priced at 588,000 yuan.
Test drives have been open since May 11.
During the company’s first-quarter earnings call on Thursday, Nio said that since the ES9 pre-launch and test drives opened, order intake for the existing ES8 rose 30% week-over-week, reaching a new high since October 2025.
The figures suggest that the ES9 is generating a broader halo effect across the flagship SUV lineup, rather than cannibalizing existing demand.
Founder and CEO William Li has told employees to “seize” the second quarter, positioning the back-to-back Onvo L80 and Nio ES9 launches as the foundation for a sales recovery.
Nio expects to deliver between 110,000 and 115,000 EVs globally across its three brands in the second quarter of 2026.
