(Graphic by CnEVPost)

Neta Automobile earned a lot of praise for outselling Li Auto in May. Now, with Li Auto's big jump in deliveries in June, it has been overtaken again.

Neta sold a record 5,138 cars in June, up 536 percent year-on-year, according to figures released July 1 by the electric car brand, backed by China's largest cybersecurity company Qihoo 360.

From January to June, Neta's sales accumulated 21,104 units, up 478 percent year-on-year.

This is the third consecutive month that Neta has sold more than 4,000 cars, with 4,015 and 4,508 cars sold in the previous two months, respectively.

Neta was previously unnoticed, but in May its deliveries surpassed Li Auto, making it one of the top three new car makers in China.

Li Auto, which had previously been ranked third in deliveries among China's new car makers, saw its deliveries drop about 22 percent to 4,323 units in May compared to April.

This resulted in Li Auto's third position being overtaken by Neta, which delivered 4,508 units in May, up 551 percent year-on-year.

However, Neta's model price is a far cry from Li Auto's 2020 Li ONE, which is priced at RMB 328,000 ($50,641).

Li Auto released data Friday showing it delivered a record 7,713 Li ONE units in June. That's up 320.6 percent from a year ago and up 78.4 percent from May.

Back to Neta, it is also aggressively expanding capacity with a planned capacity of 80,000 units at its Tongxiang plant, 100,000 units at its Yichun plant and 100,000 units at its Nanning plant, for a total capacity of 280,000 units.

Neta's short-term goal is to sell more than 10,000 units a month, yicai.com quoted the company's CEO Zhang Yong as saying in June.

This is a milestone for it, and in the second phase the brand will launch an excellent model in the RMB 100,000-200,000 range and get monthly sales to 5,000-10,000 units, Zhang said.

He said he hopes to achieve the second phase in the next 1-2 years, followed by a target of 400,000-500,000 units per year by 2025.

Judging from its current performance, Neta still has a long way to go to reach the goal of 10,000 units per month.

Neta 2020 sales are 15,000 units. In the first five months of this year, Neta's cumulative sales reached 16,000 units, including 4,508 units sold in May.

An interesting change: Li Auto's May deliveries surpassed by Neta