Great Wall is playing fast catch-up in China's competitive NEV market, as it has fallen behind main rivals in the segment.

Chinese automotive giant Great Wall Motor saw record sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs) as other major EV players posted strong numbers.

Great Wall sold 28,896 passenger NEVs in July, up 163 percent from 10,994 in the same month last year and up 8.35 percent from 26,643 in June, figures released by the company yesterday showed.

The company's unaudited figures, released on July 5, showed it sold 26,669 NEVs in June. It fine-tuned that figure in yesterday's announcement.

Looking at NEV sales by Great Wall's sub-brands, the Ora brand sold 10,116 NEVs in July, the Haval brand 10,105, Wey 6,652 and Tank 2,023.

In the January-July period, Great Wall's NEV sales were 121,965 units, up 64 percent year-on-year.

Great Wall is catching up fast in China's highly competitive NEV market, as it has fallen behind its main competitors in the segment.

Over the past few months, Great Wall has significantly increased its efforts in the NEV market with the launches of a number of NEV models including the Lanshan DHT-PHEV, the Haval Xiaolong, and the Tank 500 Hi4-T.

Great Wall's sales are still mainly from conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. It didn't release sales of non-NEV models in yesterday's announcement, though last month's figures show that NEVs only contributed 25.41 percent of its sales in June.

By comparison, one of its main rivals, BYD (OTCMKTS: BYDDY), ceased production and sales of cars powered entirely by internal combustion engines last March, switching to focus on producing plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles.

BYD sold a record 262,161 NEVs in July, bringing its January-July total to more than 1.5 million units, half of its target for the year.

($1 = RMB 7.1777)

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