[This article was first published on businesstimes.com.sg]

The Ora Good Cat might not catch mice, but it could snare buyers who want a playful electric car

THE future of cars is pastel-coloured and cute. At least, it will be if the Ora Good Cat gets a pawsitive reaction here, and herds of them end up prowling the island.

“The what?” you ask. Good question. The Good Cat is a pure electric five-seat hatchback from China. It has a single motor driving the front wheels, detuned from 171 horsepower to 143 just for Singapore. That way you can register it with a cheaper Category A Certificate Of Entitlement (COE), perhaps the real good cat of the story here.

On a single charge, it can cover a claimed 420 km, which more or less checks out; I covered 183 km in the demo car and returned it with the battery at 57 per cent and an estimated 232 km to go before empty. 

The adorable hatch apparently owes its name to former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who once declared: “No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat, as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat.”

I can’t see this pouncing on rodents, but at least it won’t bat stuff off your shelves or unravel your toilet roll for kicks, which should make it positively angelic in any cat owner’s eyes.

As for Ora, it’s an acronym for Open, Reliable and Alternative, but is also in honour of the 18th century Swiss mathematician, Leonhard Euler, whose name is pronounced “ōu lā” in Mandarin.

Whatever you call it, the Ora is eye-catching enough to be driven down a catwalk. It has a face like it swallowed a canary, and a body whose organic curves give it a disarming blobbiness. There’s a modern touch in the form of a sleek, flush-mounted strip of tail lights, while the headlights evoke the classic Mini Cooper, or maybe even a certain iconic sportscar from a company whose name sounds a lot like “Portia”.

Size-wise, the Good Cat is larger than it appears in pictures, although it does have unusual proportions. It’s shorter than a Volkswagen Golf but wider, not to mention a good 11.2 centimetres taller, probably because the batteries live under the body, like in all sensible electric cars.

Inside, the Ora mixes the retro with the modern. A small row of chromed toggle switches pay tribute to Mini (or copy it, depending on how you see these things), and there’s an old school simplicity to the dashboard, complemented by contrast stitching and quilted upholstery.

The displays and controls are nice and contemporary, with a pair of 10.25-inch screens in a single freestanding housing, a la Mercedes. There’s a glass roof to let light pour in and make the cabin feel bright and airy, but the Good Cat’s windows are large anyway, which has the same effect.

Whatever it is, the interior is just as pleasant as the cheery exterior, so unless you’re a major grump, sitting in the Good Cat ought to brighten your day. If it doesn’t, the front seats are ventilated and can gently massage your back.

Things are less plush in the back, where there’s a decent amount of room for such a compact car but no air-con vents.

Driving the Good Cat is a similarly mixed bag. For an electric car the performance is pretty languid, but the initial acceleration is strong and the motor is pleasantly silent. Yet, wind and tyre noise start to intrude at highway speeds. The suspension also works better at low speeds than high, where the ride can get busy. Overall, the Ora feels most at home in the city.

Spending time with the car exposes more rough edges. The seats don’t have adjustable lumbar support, and the pedal positioning feels off, with the brake pedal quite a bit closer to your body than the accelerator.

The touchscreen’s user interface needs work, too, with many items buried deep in the menus – it’s five taps to switch on the seat ventilation and massage, for instance. If you use CarPlay, you have to exit it to access any other controls. No such problem with Android Auto, but only because it doesn’t work with the Good Cat yet.

Still, the car is generally well equipped, especially when it comes to safety features. It can detect pedestrians or cyclists and brake for them if you don’t. It can keep you from blundering into a vehicle in your blind spot. It will warn you against opening the door into a cyclist’s face. If it all goes wrong, there are seven airbags, which is just as well because you haven’t got nine lives.

On a practical level, the Good Cat’s biggest letdown is its boot, which is small and well-like in shape, making bulky items tricky to load. But this is a car designed to be bigger on purrsonality than practicality, and it does feel nicer inside than most cars at a similar price point. It offers a stylish, playful way to go electric, but detractors will be put off by the small boot and clunky interface. Not everyone is a cat person, after all.

GWM Ora Good Cat Motor Power/Torque 143 hp/210 Nm Battery Type/Capacity Lithium-ion/63 kWh Charging 7 hours at 11kW (AC, estimated), 42 minutes 15 to 80 per cent at 67 kW (DC, estimated) Range 420 km (claimed) 0-100 kmh 11 seconds Top Speed 152 kmh Efficiency 16.7 kWh/100 km Agent Cycle & Carriage Singapore

 

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[Source article: businesstimes.com.sg/lifestyle/ora-good-cat-review-purrsonality-first-practicality-second]