Great Wall Motor’s Ora brand – which sells just one model in Australia, the GWM Ora electric hatch – has only ever offered battery-electric vehicles (EVs), but it’s weighing a change.
However, the company isn’t looking at straying too far from Ora’s mission statement in the process.
“After the studying of how consumers use [EVs], it’s mainly daily city driving. And so with that sort of opportunity, the current Ora is kind of where the sweet spot is, and potentially something slightly bigger as well,” GWM International vice president James Yang told Australian media through an interpreter at the recent Shanghai motor show.
“They don’t particularly need long range. And so that’s where we believe the opportunity is.
“Within BEV we are looking at doing more in this area and in this segment, and in particular improvements for the Good Cat as well as a small SUV, and not only that but potentially even moving into hybrid in the Ora brand.”
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Ora Ballet Cat
An SUV would finally give Ora a direct rival to electric SUVs from brands like BYD, Chery and MG, among others.
GWM doesn’t offer EVs across any of its other brands, including the namesake brand under which it sells all of its vehicles in Australia.
However, it sells plug-in hybrid GWM, Tank and Wey models.
The introduction of Ora hybrids wouldn’t be the first time in recent history a Chinese EV brand has made plans to offer vehicles that utilise an internal combustion engine.
Geely-owned Zeekr, for example, revealed its first hybrid model at last week’s Shanghai show.
Other Chinese brands that don’t sell traditional combustion-powered vehicles, such as Deepal and Leapmotor, offer extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs) in addition to EVs, with a petrol engine used as a generator.
GWM’s Ora brand offers just three models: the Good Cat, sold here as the GWM Ora; the Ballet Cat; and the Lightning Cat.
Two of these are small electric hatchbacks, with the Lightning Cat being a mid-size electric sedan.
At the Shanghai show, the brand also revealed a ‘Travel Edition’ of its Lightning Cat, the latest in a flurry of wagon reveals by Chinese brands.
Established in 2018, Ora has predominantly sold only electric hatchbacks such as the White Cat and Black Cat, though its debut vehicle was an unusual, high-riding sedan called the iQ.
The Cat theme is a reference to quote by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who said: “No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat.”
This feline theme also goes hand-in-hand with the styling of Ora vehicles, which have traditionally been, for lack of a better word, cute.
The wild Mecha Dragon was planned to be offered under the Ora brand after GWM scrapped plans to establish another brand to sell the full-size electric sports sedan.
However, it’s unclear just how many were sold, and it no longer appears within the showroom on Ora’s Chinese-market website.
Ora sold 63,272 vehicles globally in 2024, which saw it beat only the more premium Wey brand (54,728 sales) among the marques in GWM’s stable.
For context, data from EV Volumes shows BYD sold 160,594 examples of its Dolphin alone, just in the Chinese market.
The Ora Good Cat, known here as the GWM Ora, hasn’t sold as well as Chinese rivals locally.
In 2024, GWM delivered 1225 examples of the electric hatchback in Australia. In contrast, BYD shifted 2116 Dolphins and MG delivered 6934 MG 4s.
MORE: Everything GWM Ora