Li Auto’s Li One electric car will be on display at Moonstar Global Harbor shopping mall in Shanghai, China on May 10, 2021.

Cost photo | Barcroft Media | Getty Images

BEIJING – Deliveries of an essentially hybrid electric car from US-listed Li Auto outperformed rival start-up Xpeng for the second consecutive month in July.

Li Auto said Sunday it shipped 8,589 Li One vehicles in July, a monthly record. The Li One SUV is the company’s only model on the market. The car has a fuel tank to recharge the battery, which increases the range of 180 kilometers by approximately 620 kilometers (385.35 miles).

Xpeng said Monday it had also shipped a monthly record of 8,040 vehicles – 75% of which were its P7 sedan rather than its other model, the G3 SUV.

That meant Li Auto shipped 549 more cars than Xpeng last month after shipping over 1,000 cars more than Xpeng in June.

On an annual basis through July, Xpeng delivered 38,778 cars, slightly more than 38,743 from Li Auto.

Of the three Chinese electric car startups listed in the US, Li Auto’s stock performed the best this year, up 15.8%.

Nio’s shares are down 8.3% over the same period, while Xpeng’s are down nearly 5.4%.

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Nio’s deliveries for July were not available on Monday morning. The company will publish its second quarter results on August 11th.

Chinese and US regulators took a closer look at Chinese companies listed in the US last month.

Some companies like Xpeng have also listed Hong Kong stocks, in part as a hedge against risk in the New York market. The startup’s Hong Kong-listed shares have fallen more than 4% since an offer that raised roughly $ 1.8 billion in early July.

Just over a week later, Xpeng announced its third model and second sedan, the P5, for just 160,000 yuan ($ 25,000). That’s less than the starting price for Tesla’s Model 3 in China of 250,900 yuan. Delivery of the P5, which is available in six versions, is scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter.

– CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.