It might have one of the strangest car names in the world, but the GWM Ora (also known as the GWM Good Cat) is the fully electric small car from GWM. Paul Maric drives the 2023 GWM Ora to see if it's any good.
Hardness tester, noise and lane keeping results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
More GWM content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/gwm
More GWM Ora content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/gwm/ora
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 00:56
Interior 03:36
Infotainment 05:03
Safety tech 06:12
Practicality 08:55
Charging 10:26
On the road 11:26
Driver aids 16:51
Performance 18:49
Verdict 21:43
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
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#gwm #ora #review
Hardness tester, noise and lane keeping results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
More GWM content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/gwm
More GWM Ora content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/gwm/ora
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 00:56
Interior 03:36
Infotainment 05:03
Safety tech 06:12
Practicality 08:55
Charging 10:26
On the road 11:26
Driver aids 16:51
Performance 18:49
Verdict 21:43
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1
You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.
Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!
Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!
CarExpert:
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Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au
Paul Maric:
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Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric
#gwm #ora #review
Category
🚗
MotorTranscript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. There is currently a battle to have the cheapest EV in Australia, and
00:07 the latest cab or cat off the rank is the GWM Aura, and I say that because it's called
00:14 the good cat overseas. I don't know who comes up with these names, but anyway, this one
00:19 is priced at just under $40,000. This competes with things like the MG4, the BYD 803, MGZS.
00:27 It's kind of a bit of everything. It's not really an SUV, but it's sort of, I don't know,
00:32 a bit hatchback-y. In terms of size, it's between like a Polo and a Golf, just to give
00:36 you a bit of a visual idea of how big it is. Today, we're going to do a detailed review
00:40 of this car, so if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review, you can use
00:44 the time codes on the screen, or if you're on YouTube, you can scroll down and use the
00:47 chapters below, and make sure you've subscribed to our channel and press the bell icon as
00:51 well so you can find out every single time we drive a good cat.
00:57 Now let's talk design. So you've got five external colours to pick from. All but white
01:00 is going to set you back $595. Let me know in the comments section below, what do you
01:04 think of the design? Do you think it is a little bit goofy, or do you think that it
01:09 looks appealing to you? Let me know what you reckon in the comments section below. Styling
01:12 is subjective, so there's no point in me sharing my thoughts on what it looks like.
01:17 So down the front here, you've got LED headlights. They say intelligent light in there, so a
01:23 decent headlight beam as well, by the way. An exclamation mark here for the logo. This
01:28 looks different to the GWM logo we've seen on things like the Canon Ute, but it is reserved
01:35 for this particular vehicle. And down at the bottom here, you've got these little chrome
01:39 outlets for those slots. And then cooling for the battery system down here. Now I did
01:43 find this interesting. There's kind of like an exposed 3D element just here as well, which
01:47 I think is kind of a cool design thing that I haven't really seen in other cars on the
01:51 market before, so that's interesting. Under the bonnet here, you just have electrical
01:56 components. There is no storage, so it is a bit disappointing they haven't used the
01:59 packaging that you can get with an electric vehicle to really take advantage of the storage
02:04 that you find in vehicles like the Model 3 and some of the Hyundai and Kia products.
02:08 Around the side here, you have a set of 18-inch alloy wheels. So the design is just sort of
02:15 pretty straightforward. You've got that sort of alloy finish there, and then just a plastic
02:20 cap in the centre there. Fairly decent profile on that tyre. It's a Gitti Comfort. So I haven't
02:27 really sort of had much experience with these tyres before, so we'll see how it goes when
02:31 we actually go for a bit of a punt. But hopefully this rides well. It's one of those things
02:35 that has disappointed us in the past with Chinese market vehicles. They don't tend to
02:39 ride that well, so we'll see if this bucks that trend. Up the top here, you've got piano
02:44 black on the wing mirror with an indicator built into there, camera on the side there,
02:48 and then black trim down the bottom there. You have proximity sensing for those door
02:52 handles, privacy glass, and then come around to the back with me.
02:56 So this is what the back looks like. You've got a black roof, you've got shark fin aerial,
03:01 brake light here. I actually think the back looks far more interesting than the front,
03:04 and it is quite a unique setup. I haven't seen anything like this before. So you can
03:07 see that LED strip along the top there. You've got the Aura badge there, GWM here, and then
03:13 additional lights down the bottom here as well. It is kind of, yeah, I don't know what
03:18 it reminds me of, but it is just a very unique design. You don't really see this much sheet
03:22 metal on a car at the rear, so I think it's something a little bit different to what they've
03:26 done before.
03:27 So let me know in the comments section below, what do you think of the design? Do you think
03:30 it looks good? Do you think they should go back to the drawing board? Let me know what
03:34 you reckon in the comments section below.
03:36 OK, so we are inside the Aura. Look, for $40,000, I actually think this is a really impressive
03:43 looking interior. I mean, just have a look at some of these materials they've used throughout
03:47 here. They have really gone to town on making this look and feel quite premium, so good
03:52 on them for giving that a crack and really just getting you that feeling that this is
03:58 value for money.
04:00 This is what the key looks like. So you've got lock, unlock, boot, and then on the back
04:06 you have the GWM logo type thing on the back. Now there is no start button. You just put
04:12 your foot on the brake to switch it on, and then if you do want to leave the car, there
04:16 is this button over here that just powers everything down. So yeah, so you've got those
04:21 two options to pick from when it comes to doing your thing.
04:23 And it is interesting, I did notice when we power the car up, have a listen to this. Kind
04:31 of sounds like a fuel pump, even though this is fully electric. Touch points, it's sort
04:35 of fairly soft to the touch, and then same story over there. Do you want to know how
04:39 soft it is? Well, we've tested all the main surfaces in this cabin with our gyrometer.
04:43 If you want to see how this car compares to others that we've tested before, have a look
04:47 at the link in the description below.
04:50 Build quality, what's it like? That's fairly wonky there in the centre. It all feels OK,
04:56 and this is our door slam test.
05:02 Now let's look infotainment. So you have a 10.25 inch infotainment screen. You also have
05:08 a 10.25 inch display ahead of the driver. In terms of audio, you have AM and FM radio
05:13 and a six speaker sound system. There is no DAB digital radio, which seems to be common
05:18 with the Chinese market cars for some reason.
05:22 Outside of that, it is all a touchscreen, so you've got to really lean in to get access
05:27 to all of that. There are no shortcut buttons down here, which is a little bit frustrating.
05:32 In terms of the operation though, it is actually pretty straightforward to use. You've got
05:35 a fair number of functions and customisations that you can actually do in here, which is
05:40 good.
05:41 The thing I also like about it is that it has wireless Apple CarPlay, so you can see
05:46 here it's nice and fast and easy to use. It is meant to have Android Auto as well, but
05:50 we can't get it working wired or wireless, so we'll see if we can follow up and find
05:55 out what the problem with that is.
05:56 And then in terms of the screen ahead of the driver, that's all controlled here on the
06:00 steering wheel using these touch sensitive buttons. You can also change drive modes as
06:05 well and it slightly changes the appearance of this screen when you press that button.
06:09 I'll show you what that looks like when we actually go for a spin.
06:12 Let's talk safety. You've got autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist
06:15 detection, auto dimming rear vision mirror, got a blind spot monitor built into the wing
06:20 mirror. You have a radar cruise control. You have a lane departure warning with a lane
06:26 centring system, which we'll test when we go for a bit of a spin.
06:29 On the parking front, you have rear parking sensors and a 360 camera. I'll show you what
06:33 that looks like. So camera quality is really good. And then you can also do some spinning
06:37 around here to see other angles. You've got a transparent chassis as well. It's kind of
06:45 fun. And then you can have a look at your wheels. What else have we got in here? You
06:49 can mute the radar. A bit of functionality there, so pretty impressive. This is what
06:53 the horn sounds like.
06:55 So what is your practicality like? We'll start off with connectivity. So you've got two USB
07:00 A ports down the bottom here, a 12 volt outlet. You do also have a wireless phone charger
07:05 up here on a gripped tab. In terms of your bottle storage, how do you go with your coffee
07:11 cup? Fits down there nicely. It's got teeth to hold that into place. And then bigger bottle,
07:18 same story as well. Fits it in there without any dramas. It's inside the door too. We'll
07:23 try a big bottle inside the door. That fits in. Not quite. You do have this centre storage
07:31 area here and then also a glove box that is pretty reasonably sized. Finally, a sunglasses
07:39 holder up the top.
07:40 On the comfort front, you have single zone automatic climate control. It's not a great
07:47 system. We found that it really fogs up the cabin randomly, fairly frequently as well,
07:53 which is a little frustrating. Your only temperature control is also here on the screen
07:57 and it is tiny. So while you're driving, you've got to take your eyes off the road,
08:00 look around the steering wheel and then figure out where that climate control is. So I think
08:06 that needs to be much better, perhaps mounted down here with this switch gear instead.
08:11 On the seat front, both the driver and front passenger seat are electrically adjustable.
08:16 So you can go forwards and backwards. Your backrest can go forwards and backwards. You
08:19 can lift the back of the seat. The seats, have a look at this. Very fancy design. It's
08:24 like a sort of faux suede material. Fairly comfortable to sit in as well. And the seating
08:30 position is actually pretty good too. So the steering offers both tilt and reach adjustments.
08:35 On our reach test, like I mentioned earlier, this stuff is quite difficult to reach while
08:39 you're driving.
08:40 Backseat time. What's it like here? So knee room's pretty good. Toe room's okay. Headroom
08:46 is really not very good. It's strange. So it's okay up here, but the roof tapers in
08:51 and it kind of feels like the door is pushing you in and the head thing is sort of pushing
08:57 you in. It's really quite a strange space to be seated. In terms of crutch comforts,
09:02 you've got your mat pockets here, one USB-A port, no air vents, unfortunately. You do
09:08 have center armrest here with two cup holders, so you can fit your bottle in there. You've
09:13 got rubber teeth as well to hold it all into place. And then you also have bottle storage
09:18 inside the door as well. If you've got kids on board, ISOFIX points on the two outboard
09:23 seats and three top tether points. And our window test, does it go all the way down?
09:27 It's auto up and down. Boom. Excellent.
09:30 Now, cargo space. Let's have a little look. So you have just over 200 litres available
09:38 with your second row up. It's not exactly the best space because if you're loading
09:41 anything into here, you've got to load it over this really high lip and then lob it in.
09:45 Then once you do, you don't really have a great amount of storage in there. You do have a
09:49 little bit of storage under here, but it is predominantly going to be eaten up by your
09:52 cable. So again, there is no rear motor here. How they haven't been able to get much deeper
09:57 storage here is beyond me. This is what it looks like with the bags in there. So there's one bag
10:04 and then here is the second bag. It's a medium-sized suitcase, but as you can tell,
10:10 you can't have to load it over that lip to actually do anything. You can expand the space
10:16 a little bit by dropping your second row out of the way. When you do that, it expands the space to
10:23 just over 850 litres. Now, before we go for a spin, let's talk about charging. So you have both
10:29 AC and DC charging. AC charging is not too bad, three phase, 11 kilowatts. DC charging, on the
10:36 other hand, is really not very good. So maximum is around 60-odd kilowatt, but the average is
10:40 around the 40 kilowatt mark, which for a modern EV today really isn't very good.
10:44 Now, in terms of battery capacity, you have two specs. You have the standard range,
10:48 which is this one, 48 kilowatt hours, and then the extended range, which is just over 60 kilowatt
10:53 hours. That gives you a driving range of 320 kilometres and 420 kilometres on the WLTP cycle,
10:59 respectively. And it is worth pointing out as well that the entry-level version of this has
11:03 an LFP battery. So that's the type of battery that isn't as susceptible to thermal runaway.
11:08 It's also the type of battery that you can constantly charge to 100% without any concerns.
11:13 The top spec version of this actually uses a typical lithium-ion battery that generally you
11:18 don't want to be charging to 100% constantly. So that is worth keeping in mind.
11:22 Okay, so we've just hit the road in the GWM Aura. So it's interesting because I don't know what
11:35 they've done here with the ride, but in the past, these Chinese domestic market cars just haven't
11:41 been very good when it comes to the ride for the Australian market, whereas this actually feels
11:47 really nice. It feels like they've put a lot of effort into a ride and handling tune that is
11:51 suitable for Australia. So we'll see how it fares when we go on our bumpy road and go for a faster
11:55 drive, but initial impressions are great so far. So this basically uses a single electric motor
12:01 that's mounted to the front axle, so it's a front-wheel drive. It only produces around 130
12:06 kilowatts of power and 250 newton-metres of torque, but you've got to remember it's not a
12:11 massive battery. It's around that 50 kilowatt-hour mark, so it doesn't weigh a huge amount, and as a
12:16 result of that, it actually feels punchy enough behind the wheel with 250 newton-metres. So if
12:22 you sort of get stuck into it, it does all the EV stuff, pushes you back in the seat. So from that
12:27 point of view, it actually all feels pretty good. I do like here as well that you've got this bar
12:31 here that indicates how much regen braking you have, and then if you go in the opposite direction,
12:36 it goes red to indicate that it is drawing current from the system. In its one-pedal driving mode
12:42 though, it's not too bad. I've got it in the strongest regen setting, but it does sort of
12:47 gradually slow down to the point where it will come to a full stop, and then it holds the car
12:52 there. So that stuff is really nice and smooth. I just think it could be a little bit more
12:56 aggressive there in terms of the way that it slows down, but I do like that you can change this view
13:00 on the side there as well to give you other visible items there, so you can see how much
13:06 energy you're using and then how much regen you're plumbing back into the battery as well. So,
13:11 yeah, pretty cool setup I reckon. Now what's it like for economy? Well, GWM claims a combined
13:19 average of about 17 kWh per 100km. We are currently sitting on 20.7, so not exactly amazing
13:30 in my opinion. That should be significantly better. I know I keep referring to it, but my
13:35 Model Y averages around 13-14 kWh per 100km, and that is a significantly bigger vehicle than this
13:40 with a bigger battery as well, so I think they could really work on the efficiency of the motor
13:45 here. Okay, sine wave time. This will give us a really good indication of how well the ride is
13:53 tuned. We hit our sine waves at 130 kph, which is the maximum speed here in Australia.
14:00 Let's see what the body is like at that full extension. So here we are here.
14:10 Yeah, it's really not too bad at all. It's quite nice and compliant over those, so excellent job
14:15 there. Okay, bumpiest road in Australia. Let's hit this at 90 kph. Let's see what this feels like.
14:24 Yeah, this is doing a great job. So like I said earlier, the ride tune is fantastic. They've just
14:32 dialed in everything that you'd expect from... Yeah, even on our condensed sine wave here,
14:38 it's doing a great job. Yeah, they've just dialed in everything you'd expect from a car that's been
14:42 tuned locally, so they've done a great job with this and I'm very impressed with how this feels
14:46 here behind the wheel. Okay, now let's talk drive mode. So you've got a button down here that goes
14:52 between auto, normal, sport, eco, plus your requisite sound effects. So we'll go over to
14:59 sport, see what this is like once we have a little fang around our track.
15:05 Gee, it's actually holding on really well for a front-wheel drive car, actually quite surprising.
15:16 The steering feels pretty good as well. This is feeling significantly better than I thought it
15:22 would. That's interesting, the windows are fogging up now as well. Yeah, look, it is actually doing a
15:30 good job. There is a little bit of body roll, but it's not the end of the world. It's interesting,
15:34 it feels like there's like a little bit of torque vectoring or something on the rear axle
15:39 because the hazard lights under brakes.
15:48 Yeah, it's actually pretty surprising. So there is like a faster version of this overseas. I'll
15:55 be curious to see what that's like to drive because for a front-wheel drive EV, this is
16:00 probably the most engaging thing I've driven as a front-wheel drive EV to date.
16:04 And along the back straight there, it's sort of humming along nicely. So yeah,
16:08 pretty impressed with that.
16:09 So just on road noise, it's not too bad in here. There is a bit of tyre noise that comes into the
16:16 cabin, but it's not the end of the world. We checked it using our calibrated sound meter. You
16:22 can see the results there on the screen. You can also compare what this is like
16:25 to other cars using the link in the description below.
16:28 Let's talk visibility. So you can see clearly out the front there, but you can't see the
16:32 front corners of the car. So it's a little bit hard to place at times. The wing mirrors are nice
16:37 and big though. You've got a blind spot monitor built into those. Visibility out the rear isn't
16:41 amazing. It's quite a narrow envelope, but you've got the camera and all that sort of stuff to help
16:45 with parking. We've also got a turning circle of just over 11 metres, which isn't too bad for a
16:49 front-wheel drive car. Okay, so time to do a little bit of testing of this semi-autonomous setup. We
16:55 do that at 70 k's an hour. We'll set the cruise control and then we will see how well the system
17:01 works. So I'll pop that on. I love those noises. So I'll pop that to auto, set cruise control,
17:13 70 k's an hour. Alrighty, let's see how this goes. So we're going to test it in the three outer
17:18 lanes here. So whole idea is as we get to the outer banking, it will have to apply more torque
17:23 to the steering wheel to keep it within its lane. It's telling us there to keep our hands on the
17:29 steering. Okay, it is. All right, so fine for lane one. We'll jump over to lane two.
17:38 Okay, so wait for that to lock on. Okay, there it is just there. All right, let's see how this goes.
17:48 It's not doing a bad job there. It's holding us
17:54 away from the line, which is good. All right, let's try lane three.
18:01 Okay, wait for that to activate. It's detected those lines. No, it's now undetected them.
18:11 Okay, there it is. Now, as you can see, it's going in and out of detecting the lanes there.
18:20 So I don't think that's going to work to find the girl that's steering.
18:23 It is sort of, yeah, it kind of just gives up on itself after a little bit. I've got to say,
18:29 some of this stuff is just poorly tuned as well. Like it is quite intrusive. The emergency lane
18:35 keeping thing would like constantly come on when you're just driving normally. So
18:40 I ended up switching all of this off because it was sort of a little bit annoying. So,
18:44 yeah, I think it's probably a system that could do with just a little bit more work.
18:48 Okay, time to do some performance testing. Before we do that, though, I wanted to tell you about
18:54 Help Me Car Expert. If you Google Help Me Car Expert, it'll take you to our website where we're
18:59 able to connect you with one of our vetted dealers to get you the best deal possible on a new car
19:05 that is in stock. So head to Google, type in Help Me Car Expert, you'll be all set.
19:10 So performance testing, we're going to go zero to 120 and then we'll come back and do a break as
19:15 well. I just don't understand these windows constantly fogging up. So let me switch stability
19:20 control off because I reckon that's going to get us off the line nice and fast.
19:26 And then we'll see how we go. All right, we're all set. Here we go.
19:30 Very leisurely off the line there. Okay, it's 80, 90, 100 and 120. Yeah, it was super casual
19:46 off the line there. We weren't in sport mode, so I might give this another crack if this number is
19:52 no good. The official time is around eight seconds. Let's see how that went. Zero to 100.
19:59 That's actually surprising. 7.97 seconds. That was actually quite fast. And then 80 to 120,
20:06 5.9 seconds, which is okay, but not sort of too amazing. We'll give it another crack anyway,
20:12 just in sport mode, and we'll see if that makes any difference to our
20:16 acceleration to 100. These noises are hilarious. So it seems like you can't do
20:21 single pedal driving. There's so many menus you've got to dart through here to make this happen.
20:28 Okay, cool. All right, let's give this a shot.
20:32 All right, to me that felt quicker. So let's see what happens. 80, 90, 100.
20:42 120. All right. It's 7.72, so slightly quicker, and 80 to 120, 5.73,
20:54 which was slightly quicker as well. So not too bad. All right, let's go for a break from
20:59 100 k's an hour. Now I'm curious to see how quickly this stops. So 80, 90, there's 100.
21:06 Let's give that a nice and strong. Let's have a little look there. So 100 to zero,
21:17 2.82 seconds, 38.42 metres. So yeah, not a bad result there for stopping from 100 k's an hour.
21:26 And the one you've been waiting for, our reverse acceleration test. Let's see how
21:31 fast it'll go in reverse. All right, 43 kilometres an hour.
21:40 So the GWM Aura, what do we reckon? Look, to be honest, I was a little bit disappointed by it.
21:51 Just on the EV front, the charging speeds aren't really that good, and I think that in today's
21:56 day and age, you really need to be pushing the boundaries forward when it comes to charging.
21:59 Yes, it is affordable, but it's pretty cramped there in the second row in terms of headroom and
22:04 just packaging. There's no storage in the front, storage in the back is pretty limited.
22:07 Just from that point, I just didn't really sort of gel with it. What I did like, though,
22:13 was the way that it handled. I thought it was quite impressive for a front-wheel drive electric
22:17 car. It was really entertaining to drive and kind of fun in that regard. And look, it is excellent
22:22 value for money. It is very cheap when you look at some of the other electric vehicles on the
22:26 market at the moment. So let me know in the comments section below, what do you reckon?
22:29 Have you ordered one? What's it like to live with, or did you go with one of the competitors
22:33 instead? I'm keen for your feedback. If you did enjoy this video, please make sure you share it
22:38 with your mates, and if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press
22:41 the bell icon as well. But until next time, take it easy.