GWM Ora review: in this EV, cheap is not cheerful
Looking like a Japanese anime cat that’s had its eyes poked out, it’s easy to see where the savings have been made. Climb inside and something fishy is going on.
I recently drove a cheap-ish Chinese-built EV that was surprisingly good, but I was only in it for about 15 minutes so it would be inappropriate and unprofessional for me to tell you about it. I can, however, tell you that it gave me hope for a China-dominated electric car future. That hope was then dashed a short while later when I drove the GWM Ora, a car that looks a tiny bit like a distant relative of the city-cool Fiat 500e.
Unfortunately, because they ran out of money for brake lights, the rear looks like a Japanese anime cat that’s had its eyes poked out (funnily enough, this car is known as the Good Cat, or Funky Cat in other markets), the Ora badge resembles a dead killer whale and the side profile looks like a blob of blue frozen yoghurt that melted in a microwave.
Fortunately, if you stand right in front of it and look at the Ora from that angle only, it’s quite cute, particularly when its little round headlights do their welcoming flash dance as you unlock it. Climb inside, however, and there’s something fishy going on – quite literally, as a koi fish leaps from your driver’s binnacle to the main screen and then flollops around with another fish. It’s almost amusing the first time, but not for long, and woe betide anyone who tries to transport a cat in this car, because it will lose its tiny mind (as a bonus, towards the end of our week together, the main screen started freezing, often with what now looked like a dead fish on it, and then started just going black, as if in mourning).
Now, clearly, this Ora is at the budget end of cheap when it comes to EVs, with a starting price of $39,990 for the Standard Range version, and it’s easy to see where savings have been made. For a start there’s no Start button, you just wind the very cheap and breezy feeling gear selector into D and off you go (and when you stop, disconcertingly, you put it in Park, get out and it finally turns off when you lock it). And while there are a few toggle switches, none of them are much use – you have to use the touchscreen for even the simplest things, like changing the temperature.
Strangely, however, the company seems to have spent a lot of money on the safety systems, all of it badly. The main screen borrows the exact look and feel of Tesla’s Autopilot system, showing you all the vehicles around you, which seems clever until you realise that the Ora has no idea what to do about any of them.
What it does know how to do is make an incredible and endlessly annoying number of warning bells, chimes, whistles and bongs. My favourite feature is the fact that if you are indicating to turn and you’re on a multi-lane road, with traffic around you, an alarm will sound because it feels the need to tell you that there are cars nearby. Now I’m not changing lanes, remember, just indicating to turn near other vehicles, something you do a lot of in Sydney traffic, and yet the alarm won’t shut off. (The indicator also turns the main screen into a display, not of the lane next to you, but the road beneath you, which is so pointlessly infuriating it had me making fish faces.)
Then, seemingly randomly, there’s another bonging sound accompanied by some words about Emergency Steering on the driver’s screen. I’m not sure why this happens or what the steering is doing, but then I’d given up on understanding anything at this point. Even the point of going anywhere.
The overall effect of all this noise sounds like a Speak and Spell toy being shoved through a blender. It’s maddening, and a particular sin in an EV, which would otherwise be a quiet place to spend time.
Speaking of EV technology, it seems that GWM (it stands for Great Wall Motors) is struggling a bit with how to apply it to the ground. The Ora is not overly powerful, with 126kW and 250Nm, but if you dare give it too much throttle, particularly around corners, you will hear something that sounds like a possum attempting to run on a belt sander as the torque utterly overwhelms the tyres, which then scream in fear. This problem is far, far worse on wet roads, when taking off from the lights brings to mind the legs from the Road Runner cartoon.
Other than that little issue, the Ora offers reasonable acceleration and doesn’t feel as underpowered as its numbers might suggest. Another issue that does need mentioning, however, is that the suspension, particularly at the front, seems like it was sent out from the factory without being finished. Hit a speed bump too fast and it can feel like the front of the car is falling off.
Apparently the Extended Range Ora I was in could go 420km on a single charge, but I wasn’t brave enough to find out.
Cheap, it turns out, does not make me cheerful.
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GWM Ora
ENGINE: Single permanent magnet synchronous electric motor 126kW/250Nm
TRANSMISSION: One-speed automatic, front-wheel drive
EFFICIENCY: 14.1kWh per 100km
PRICE: $45,990
RATING: One star out of five