Photo: screenshot of a viral online video

A car crashed into a guardrail in a downtown Beijing street on Monday afternoon and hit another car, injuring two, local police announced. 

Videos circulating online identified the car as a Chinese NIO ES8 electric vehicle. 

The public relations personnel of Chinese electric car start-up NIO, also known as Chinese Tesla challenger, confirmed with the Global Times that the car involved was NIO ES8 electric vehicle and said it was an ordinary car accident.       

According to the police report, on Monday around 1.40 pm, a male driver surnamed Zhu crashed into the guardrail along the Beijing Station Avenue Beikou in Dongcheng district due to poorly operating the vehicle and then hit another car.

The accident injured a person in each car involved, damaged the two cars and the guardrail.

After testing, Zhu did not drink alcohol or took drugs.

The accident is under further investigation, said the report, without identifying the car model. 

Videos posted by netizens online showed that a Chinese electric vehicle (EV) crashed into the guardrail along Chang'an Avenue - the main urban road in Beijing. They noted that the car was an NIO ES8 and the front of the vehicle was badly damaged. 

Another netizen said the accident happened on Jianguomennei Avenue, which forms part of the extended Chang'an Avenue.

The pictures and videos showed traffic police officers arriving at the scene.

Electric vehicle traffic accidents have prompted a round of safety concerns. 

US electric carmaker Tesla is in hot water after a series of incidents involving its models were reported in several cities in China.

The latest incident showed that a Tesla vehicle ran into two traffic policemen in Taizhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, on May 17, in which one seriously injured policeman died in hospital later. 

Another Tesla car rear-ended a truck in Shaoguan, South China's Guangdong Province, on May 7, killing the driver of the electric car, media reports said.

These cases followed an incident where a woman surnamed Zhang from Central China's Henan Province climbed onto a Tesla car at Shanghai Auto Show 2021 to protest at a brake malfunction in her Tesla. The incident went viral on China's web platforms.