Ora Cat review: Britain's cheapest new EV

in the 70s japanese car brands wanted to push through and break the market in europe america and the uk met with resistance at first but then they realized they had a superior product loads of kit standard massive reliability the same happened with korean car makers in the 90s and the 2000s and look where they are now now we also have chinese brands evolving at a rate of knots and this is one of the brands that so far we've never heard of in the uk and that's why today's walk around video is going to be a brand new brand and a brand new car you haven't heard of that's called the cat it's a car that's called a cat i'm johnny smith welcome to the late break show [Music] so before we start talking about whether it's a retro and why it looks strangely familiar in certain places we'll do that in a minute first let's talk about aura the brand so aura sits as a sub brand underneath gwm great wall motors in the uk you can buy a pickup truck called the steed and that's about the only great wall brand that we know of in 2018 the aura sub brand was born in china now it's time for that car to come into the uk and to europe as well 2022 this will go on sale orders open for this car in december what's really interesting i was reading this earlier that great war motors are investing 13 and a half billion pounds in the next five years in what they call new energy vehicles so that means hydrogen as well as plug-in stuff and the other thing to mention is the aura brand is electric only from the word go so in china you can buy three types of or a model right now you can buy the good cat which is going to be branded cat here so it's this car you can buy the r1 black cat which is like a tiny cartoon-eyed k-car which is very funky and actually solves really well and then you can buy the r2 white cat which kind of looks like a mashup of a nissan cube toyota scion box boxy thing i don't think we're getting those two cars uh it's not confirmed at least so we're going to be focusing on the cat the artist formerly known as the good cat great wall motors unveiled this at the munich motor show a few months back and they also unveiled another brand that's going to be called the way wey which is an suv car aimed at a much higher end more luxury brand a bmw rival if you will this is a lower um more value brand than that this car is going to be going on sale they say for 25 000 pounds excluding any government grants and like i said all aura vehicles are always going to be fully electric if you're watching this and you think ah it's just it's just chinese i'm not interested well consider this let's not forget that gili gili own volvo polestar and they also own the london electric vehicle company chinese company bank rolling all of that developing all of that let's not forget neo and xpeng these new brands very very fast accelerating quite luxurious brands that are coming into the european market imminently the rate of acceleration and evolution from chinese brands is massive and lots of german and other premium brands use chinese train running gear infotainment they just don't tell you about it so ed this is this is unusual because you don't often see a brand that's completely new logo unseen name unheard of trying to break into new territory is actually quite hard thing to do i suspect it's uh very exciting it's uh it's been a long while since there's a new brand entering the medium price point space of the car market and so we have the aura cat which will be up against many bee hatch and bsuv vehicles you're sort of calling it a b segment car then b segment be it b hatch or b suv okay so somewhere in the middle so i'm just having a look at the um the brochure which is hot off the press let's talk about the design it's it's a strange one because it's weirdly familiar in many different places and just like i would say in the 70s when japanese sports cars like the seleca emulated iconic cars like the mustang i think this is what's going on with the aura and i think it's fascinating headlights there's more than a touch of mini one going on here isn't there but the first gen mini one when it wasn't so crazy and bloated these have incorporated this this running light which i've just put on for you the drl but also this is the indicator and the edge of this will go amber the bonnet now it's a very kind of like stubby bonnet and it's got these ridges in and i think where have i seen those ridges before i'm pretty sure i've seen those on a porsche cayman i might be wrong but there's a bit of cayman going on there with these two these two strong ribs the badge so the logo of a car company that we've never heard of it's always it's always ambitious for a brand to come out of nowhere and try and conquer a market and that's the job the aura i guess has got in places like the uk where we're very badge driven there's a lot of bad snobbery around here at the side this is kind of weird there's sort of like faded hexagons as just a piece of design there's they're not indicators i thought they were but they're not all that's going on here it's just a piece of design now before i get too deep in the uh the design you're probably thinking how big is this car johnny because some cars like the ioniq 5 hyundai when you look at it on video and i did do a video for that car it doesn't look that big but in actual fact it's massive okay this car dimensionally is 4 235 mil long 1825 mil wide and 1596 millimeters tall okay and it's 1 510 kilos in curb weight i've got some specs for its competitors but really just let's just talk dimensionally dimensionally okay the mg zs which i think is probably a rival is 79 mil longer 24 mil higher eight kilos lighter the nissan leaf which when we go to the back you'll go oh this reminds me a bit of a first gen nissan leaf yeah it does but actually better the leaf is 255 mil longer significantly longer 66 mil lower in height and 70 kilos heavier and then you've got the zoe the renault zoe which i actually drove here today in 148 mil shorter 30 mil lower height 8 kilos lighter in weight anyway enough of that come round to the side because the side profile is interesting here now it's quite a curvaceous thing is it retro is it modern is it a bit of everything i think it's probably the cat is a bit of everything we've actually got two cats here we'll come on to the gt in a minute because that's a trim level that's going to be available apparently there's going to be four trim levels available one of which is the gt but those uh specifics um of the the levels are not defined as yet but what we do know is this car is going to be for sale from 25 000 pounds without uk grant which actually makes it pretty competitive especially given that like extra value brands like mg who make very very very bargainer cvs that starts at 26 grand after the grant the mg zs yeah and a zoe from 27 and a half thousand pounds so i mean competitive side profile wheels not massively keen on the wheels there remind me of an early 2000s mcgann coupe do you know what i mean a bit softline but there's going to be a number of different wheel choices i am told in the side here you've got the charging port here you're probably going hang on a minute that doesn't look familiar this is a pre-production car cars coming to the uk right hand drive uk spec european spec cars will have ccs rapid charging so on here we've got this kind of curvy goes up over the top of the um the front wing then it dips down along the door and then it goes up here and then it's got quite a bulbous back end again because it's a new brand that you've never heard the name of it does look weird with it name on it but look at look how minimal it is the chrome badge is big confident and you can't really see where the lights are these lights down here apparently this is reversing lights and i think there are indicators down here and there's this mad full width stop brake light which is mounted behind the glass it's built into the tinted part of the rear window it is a bit bulbous it is a bit mark one nissan leaf but it is slightly better looking i think than this one if it seems to work better with the rest of the retro going on there the sort of elements of mini one and the bit bits of this and a bit of that but also i think if i lock it isn't it oh did somebody say michael knight i think they did i'll do it again just because i'm not bored of it yet don't touch turbo boost michael there's a ton of competitors that the the aura cat has got to compete with for people like you you know to get the customer's eyes onto it and to even consider a brand that has no presence in the uk mg exists in the uk chinese owned chinese run they literally bought the name and they've carried it on from your perspective as someone representing the brand and kind of trying trying to push it in into a new territory yeah what is your sort of arch rival vehicles or your benchmark vehicles that this would be considered against i mean i've kind of made a few notes myself but key competitors would be the likes of the corsa the e-corsa the e-208 from peugeot it would be the hyundai corner electric it would be the vw id3 the mgzs so quite a wide spanning range of uh competitors boot space okay tiny little parcel shelf a bit like a fiat 500 actually but the boot space is bigger than the fiat 500 now what i would say and i was having a goose here at the boot space the boot space of the cat is 228 liters so that makes it smaller than the courser e it makes it smaller than the zoe the citroen c4 the leaf by a long way so it isn't a market leader in boot space but but i actually thought it was bigger than i actually thought it was bigger than 228 liters because it's a half decent shape there's an area underneath here there's cables here but there's an area under there for some of the charge cabling gubbins and there's also you can drop the seats from up here with a loop handle like that so i guess a one-handed operation is what you would call this 60 40 split so way more useful than smaller cars like the honda e and the 500 e and that genre but smaller than the coarser sized vehicles right the big question with evs obviously is range and charging abilities so let's talk about those it will have ccs as standard and all aura cats sold will be able to dc rapid charge up to 80 kilowatts which i think 40 minutes 10 to 80 percent for the small battery and 50 minutes 10 to 80 now that gives you a clue there are two battery options for the aura cat just like the fit 500e and a couple of other electric cars the 48 kilowatt hour is the entry level car and then there's a 63 kilowatt hour top of the range battery bigger battery but the finished cars will also have two things on-board three-phase 11 kilowatt ac charging as standard and also 6.6 single-phase ac charging as standard so great combination of charging abilities no faffing you can't upgrade they're all like that range wltp in miles 209 miles which is 336 kilometers or the biggen 261 miles 421 kilometers big batteries impressive ranges as standard really good let's talk about the motor itself all cats all cats are front wheel drive front motor okay and they're all the same power output i believe 126 kilowatts which is 171 ps that will deliver 250 newton meters of torque that will deliver zero to 62 in eight and a half seconds and i believe it does zero to 30 miles an hour which is 50 kilometers an hour in 3.8 top speed restricted to 100 i'm cool with 100 that's fine now people won't have heard of aura but they might have heard of of great wall motors the do you know if the the the batteries in this and the the motors are they made by the great wall group themselves um designed and developed by great wall motors and one of the the most interesting things about this vehicle is that it is bev only so it's a purpose-built bev um so for and the great wall motor company itself is one of the oldest chinese vehicle manufacturers having started in 1984 so it has quite a long background and long-ranging level of experience so it's it's very very good indeed let's talk about the car the cabin of the cat i think is really quite exceptional i think the whole car's better in the metal and it is in pictures um it's a bigger car than i was expecting love some of the the furnishings the textiles but there's no doubt there's been inspiration from the fiat 500 and minis one slash cooper you can see these switches here the toggles with the little dividers in between here very very mini you can see the sort of lines on here and the kind of two-tone italian stitching on it very very fiat 500 and i don't think that's a bad thing i can see why they're doing that according to the stats predominantly going to be a female orientated car so these two tones and nice textiles it's going to be high on the list this is tasteful considering so many manufacturers have the stuck-on kind of tablet which i think is a bit awkward this nestles into the dash quite neatly on the catch these are two screens the right hand one is 10.25 inches and this one on the left is the same size and it's all touch this is all uh event so one wide divided event which is tasteful as the videographer nick said wow the dash looks like it's made of alcantara from three feet away absolutely does when you touch it not quite so much but i have to say the feeling of the the plastics the feeling of the textiles is actually higher spec than i was expecting bearing in mind what this car is going up against for the price i think it's very impressive on first on first impressions we've got a center console here with a rotary dial for the drive which is very sort of jaguar range rover and other manufacturers like in fact kia are doing it then you've got a pair of cup holders down here with optional i think wireless phone charging just there pair of usbs i like it i think it's i think it's funky i think it carries it off very well now what the other thing i would say is there's a lot of kit on on the cat snapdragon 8155 uh chipset for intelligent cockpit intel mobile eye for intelligent driving 360 degree camera because i was looking at it earlier so you've got things like park assist you've also got massage sheets heated optional cooled seats but massage seats on a car of this segment massage sheets are unheard of seat setting here we go driver's seat massage on oh my gosh that was instant okay while i'm having my coccyx pummelled uh let's have a look at the immediate dash pinnacle display here there's a silver surround actually i thought it was illuminated but it's silver this is all kind of brushed faux aluminium finish here i really like the layout on the left hand side you've got like what looks like a wheel and that is your battery status full to empty on the right you've got the same thing but for power the amount i guess the throttle position and whether you're getting any any regen back nicely two spoke steering wheel which i do like very similar to the honda e in fact which i very very much like i like a two spoke i'm not sure why i just i just kind of like them diamond stitching on the middle portion of the doors and then the top half is body colored most of the interiors are going to be available as two-tone i think the entry-level car will be just jet black i fear that jet black might make it a bit boring it won't bring out some of this creativity they've only just released some of the details to me this morning so yeah there's a 360 degree camera 12 ultrasonic radars a single front mounted high perception camera to navigate every driving situation um we've got uh it's a steel body uh body shell uh smidge over one one and a half tons in weight which is good considering the battery size it's got the latest esp systems automatic e-call crash and breakdown assistance this car has a five-year warranty on the vehicle and eight-year warranty on the drivetrain pretty good you've thrown a lot at this haven't you i mean like if you just talk about it in terms of tech as standard what are the main kind of things you will expect to get so we'll have four grades um and the standard equipment from entry is like nothing else that's out there on the market currently so from entry um we'll see the likes of wireless apple carplay wireless android auto it's a fully electric car as we've discussed so it'll come standard from the entry grid with three-phase ac charging and that will be particularly useful uh particularly once workplace charging becomes the norm with electric vehicles in the not so distance future um 18-inch alloy wheels would be standard across the range regardless of which grade you get so a level of equipment that's usually associated with the segment above at a kind of a mid-grade offering yeah available on an from entry-level vehicle that's pitched somewhere in the v segment be a b hatch or b suv okay as per usual on the late break show i've sat in the front seat in the driver's seat set it how i have it i'm six foot three um and i'm sitting behind myself i've got lots of leg room the floor is a little high because you've got the battery pack set underneath the floor which you can actually see when you crawl under it it's near as dammit flat floor car maybe an inch ridge in the middle three seats across here arm rest loads of headroom actually it's got a nice cutout for the headroom remember this is not a crossover design this is not a pretend suv this is just a hatchback but you know i like that i'm cool with that thing i feel back here aside from the fact it's spacious is it looks and it feels more expensive than what it really is especially compared to things like entry-level vw id3s which i think feel entry-level and a bit scratchy especially for a volkswagen you know for a german brand i'm looking at this dash and i'm looking at the two-tone seats and the and i'm actually thinking this is this is really quite a nice place to be there is one usb at the back she'll have to fight over it isofix of course and the door aperture i know it's a dull thing to say but having experienced the peugeot e208 which a fantastic car but with a very triangular entry this is actually much much better yeah much better this is cool what i want to see and i have i've not seen any other cat apart from this one um i want to see it in a different color you can get it in quite a larry gold and i'm wondering whether that'd be too much or whether it might work and you can get it in a metallic brown which i think with some retro style wheels could work really nicely let's have a quick look at the gt trim level which they've got there so the gt car doesn't have any performance gains any difference in high voltage the same two battery pack sizes um same output same zero to 60 all of that as the normal cat the gt does have the sort of faux carbon fiber kind of race car arches sill skirts these um alloy wheels 18 so same diameter just a different look with the red insert especially from this corner there's definitely a john cooper works mini thing going on you've already got the mini one kind of inspired eyes this is definitely reminiscent of the john cooper works many i reckon it's not going to appeal to everyone if i'm being honest for me i think that the look of the cat lends itself better to a sort of happy cartoony retro look which but i haven't gone in here yet look at it in here so gt car gets black with red red accents throughout sports embroidered head rests and i guess it's just a little bit more kind of like race look without the race insurance or performance credentials so like i say the wheels are different suspension's the same probably your biggest styling cue is this sort of wrc style spoiler which is different uh obviously you've got the badge here but you've got these inserts here the sort of um air scoops which the normal cat does not get will it go like a scalded cat no because it's exactly the same performance as the other one what's interesting about this particular car and again this is pre-prod the same as this one is there's no or a badge there's no chrome they've de-chromed it so there's actually nothing on the bootleg at all so it's it's got quite a big ass a little bit like the um the megane that era of the shaking that asthma again which i actually think is my favorite megan shape but anyway i digress i like the uncluttered look i like that that rear window mounted huge bank of leds rear diffuser looks like you've sort of got bleeding gums or you're a shark that's just eaten a seal and it's all a bit bloody and i'm not sure what do you think put a comment below this is the top spec this is going to be the flagship car would you say yeah so uh the gt um as we see it today so in in the gt guys will be available in mid oran high grid um guys so basically take the mid-grade offering and add these gt elements or take the high high spec or the top of the range model and add these gt gt styling elements to it i hope you found this episode as interesting as me i'm fascinated when i see a new brand emerging out of seemingly nowhere and progressing at a rate of knots how's the cat going to drive is it going to go like a scholar cat i don't know i haven't driven it yet nobody's really driven it yet as soon as i can i surely will what do you think about the aura cat do you value bad snobbery over what you see what warranty you get i'd like to know what you think in the comments below once again thanks for watching one of these fresh new car reviews on the late break show these are supported by continental tires cheers

Channel: The Late Brake Show

Views: 375,188

Keywords: jonny smith car review, car pervert, the late brake show, chinese electric car, chinese ev, cheapest electric car, ev, great wall motor ora, gwm ora good cat, ora good cat, ora good cat 2022, ora good cat battery size, ora good cat gt, ora good cat dimensions, ora good cat europe, ora good cat ev, ora good cat price, ora good cat range, VW ID.3 rival, best value ev uk, new retro EV, uk's cheapest new ev, best value family ev, renault zoe rival, cute electric car, gwm

Id: 8BvevMKcXmc

Length: 24min 59sec (1499 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/AdviceUnknown]

Looks nice on the outside (not so keen on the interior). Price will be a little high with the optionals I feel and it could use a little more storage space in the back. Decent range with the bigger battery. Overall a nice looking car I’d consider getting as a second car

[u/IntellegentIdiot]

Cheapest EV (with 200+ mile range)!

[u/shaggy99]

Looks wise, to me it is a cross between the new beetle, mini, and Fiat 500. The hood bulges make me think of the MGB V8, and some Triumphs? The wheels look very 1970-1980s to me.

[u/Peugeot905]

According to the video 25K is the starting price without the grant.

[u/qazwec]

crash test? battery chemistry?

[u/g0ndsman]

This is a cool looking car and I hope it does well, but can someone explain how the trunk is so small? The car is the same length as my ID3 (2 cm shorter) but the trunk space is less than 60% of mine. And the ID3 doesn't have a huge trunk to begin with. It seems way too small for the size. It has a small trunk even compared to a B segment car while having the size of a C segment.