Living with an... Ora 03 (Month 4)

So, what even is the Ora 03? You might know it as the Funky Cat, which is what Ora called it when it launched in the UK towards the end of 2022. They changed that to ‘03’ in January 2024 – sadly, in our opinion – and fiddled with the spec a bit. But the car itself is unchanged. It’s an almost-family-sized (we’ll get into that) electric hatchback by Chinese brand Ora, new to the UK and owned by Great Wall Motors - famous (if you like) for the Steed pickup truck. Still, the 03 is, without doubt, one of the most intriguing new cars on the market.
For three months we’ll be driving a base ‘Pure+’ model, with a 48kWh battery and a 193-mile quoted range. Following that we’ll be taking a ‘Pro+’ car, with a bigger battery and more equipment. For the first month or so we’ll also be running the car without a home charger installed – that comes shortly – so it really is like we’re new this electric car ownership thing. And by “we”, I mean "The Nichol Family" – mum, dad and two teenage kids. This will replace a six-cylinder, quite loud and quite fast SUV as our main family wheels for the next six months. It’ll definitely be… interesting. Skip to: Month 1 | What even is this? Month 2 | Can the Ora handle a funky cat? Month 3 | Having a home EV charger installed Month 4 | BIG battery bonanza

Mark says: “I'm in love with the 03, but it's a tumultuous relationship. The way it looks, the way it feels like to drive, its rizz-party interior and its rarity - all brilliant. But the infotainment software needs a CTRL-ALT-DLT...and it keeps BONGING at me! Best long-term test car ever.”

Trips taken

We’ve only had the car for a few weeks and it’s mainly been doing a 20-mile-odd daily work commute. Nothing too exciting to report on that front… except that we’re running it without a home charger. That’s booked to come soon. In the meantime we’ve had to resort to plugging it into a three-pin socket through the garage using a Type 1 cable. The glamour. It’s not that sensible, or advisable – there are all kinds of reasons why a proper home charger is near-enough essential for electric car ownership, which we’ll talk about in the coming months – but… honestly… it’s working fine. Mainly because even a three-pin trickle is enough to keep the battery charged above 80 percent overnight.

We like

Lots. The 03 is a REALLY interesting car. It’s been fascinating seeing how people react to this thing. As a car journalist who’s driven his fair share of exotic cars and been furtively filmed in plenty of them (it’s ALWAYS obvious, lads), I can honestly say that this is one of the most conspicuous cars I’ve ever driven. It’s probably because nobody knows what the heck it is, but at the same time, it’s so friendly-looking and different, that the surprise usually turns into delight.

We're not so keen on

The name. Following on from the above, whenever anyone has got into the 03 and asked the inevitable question, I’ve found myself saying the same thing: “Yeah... this is a Funky Cat...” *pause, wait for disbelieving reaction* “True story… well, sort of true. It used to be called Funky Cat and then they changed it to Ora 03.” “So what’s Ora?” “That’s the name of the brand. It’s new. Chinese. Part of Great Wall Mot… hello? You still awake?” And then the car bongs and they definitely are awake…

Niggles

The bongs. All of them. All the time. The 03 has more bongs than Cypress Hill. They should have changed the name from Funky Cat to Scaredy Cat, so agitated does the 03 seem at all times. The issue isn’t with the safety systems per se – it’s of course a good thing to be reminded if you’re drifting out of lane, or appear distracted, or might be about to rear-end another car. The issue is that the warnings are often themselves the distraction. The 03 will, for instance, audibly tell you “DON’T BE DISTRACTED!” when you’ve merely glanced in the direction of the touchscreen. It’ll tell you brake when you’re parking or creeping forward in a traffic queue (rarely, but it happens). And it will bong to tell you that the “emergency steering function” has been activated at random times. I assume that’s the lane-keeping assistant. In fairness, I’m exaggerating a little… or maybe I’m not? Maybe I’ve just become accustomed to these things as features of the car and learned to drown them out.And also in fairness, I’m yet to prang the car, so technically it’s working.

Surprise and delight

I just love this car, despite the above. And I can’t fully account for it yet. I think it’s partly because it’s new and slightly mysterious and rare. But it’s also the design, inside and out. The interior is proper lovely – an appealing mix of retro charm and dinky luxury that evokes the Nissan Figaro in many ways. The cream and red colour palette makes a massive difference too – the best combo by far, in my view. Electronic niggles aside – there’s plenty more to say about the infotainment system – it basically drives very well. There’s a little more mechanical noise than you’d want – you can hear the power steering and brake servos at low speed – and wind noise is on the high side on the motorway. But it’s comfy, feels huge inside for a car that looks so small, and the 171 horsepower motor is quick enough. Back to top

Mark says: “There’s a ready-made cheesy line here about whether one Funky Cat can handle another funky cat. Sadly, one is no longer a Funky Cat and the other never was one, so it doesn't really work… I'm taking my big drum kit to a gig in an Ora 03, basically”

Trips taken

The Ora 03 is an odd sized thing, but in the most useful way. The cabin feels huge for a car that, on the road, seems pretty small. Like driving a Fiesta or something. But because Ora has liberated so much space in the cabin, it makes for a very passable family car. Somehow, it’s got more rear leg space than a certain chubby Volkswagen Group SUV (see below), and it feels airier because of the interior colour scheme. Red and cream, that’s the dream. (Sorry.) But the boot is where the sacrifices have been made, clearly. It’s 228 litres, which for context is a mere 17 litres bigger than three-door Mini Hatchback’s boot. And so, when it came to gig time, this non-funky cat (that's me) was worried about how the former Funky Cat (that's the 03) would cope. I needn’t have worried though...

We like

The space. Because somehow – despite the lack of boot volume and the horrible non-flat loading floor when the seats are dropped – the 03 swallowed a drumkit like a post-nightclub Big Mac. Weirdly, it handled the task better than a Volvo EX30 did a week earlier. The kit spilled into the passenger seat in the Swedish car. Honestly, I have no idea how a car that feels this small on the road appears to have so much interior space. It almost makes up for the software. If the Ora 03’s infotainment screen was a drummer, it would be Lars Ulrich: it makes the simplest things seem difficult. And it never shuts up.

We're not so keen on

While we’re talking loading things (a Reload, if you like – another one for the Metallica fans), the big drop down to the boot floor properly sucks when, say, you need to lift heavy bags of compost out of it. No pics of that particular Garden Centre Odyssey, but you can imagine the scene. And other than that, the boot works just fine because most of the time we’re using our Ora to do mundane things: a little bit of food shopping; a little bit of getting to work and back; a little bit of facilitating the kids’ social lives. Worst Mambo No. 5 cover ever. We didn't do that at the gig.

Niggles

We just CANNOT get on board with the software, and it extends to more areas of the driving experience than just the screen. The indicators, for instance. Tap the stalk and the indicator will blink three times. Press it fully and it’ll stay on. So far, so standard. However, you’d think you’d be able to cancel a three-blink tap by tapping the stalk again, but you can't, and if you tap it in the opposite direction (an intuitive way to cancel), the opposite indicator turns on. So you end up in this left-right-left-right-left-right tailgate disco loop, vexing yourself and confusing whoever is behind you. And it happens frequently because your intuition takes over when you’re driving – especially when doing something that requires more focus, like a lane change. That was a lot of detail, I know, but it’s an example of a little haptic misstep that makes the Ora needlessly frustrating at times. (If we were using random Metallica references, we’d say something about having St. Anger around our necks. But we’re not. So we won’t.) Same thing with having to re-connect my phone EVERY TIME I get into the car. And having to turn the energy recovery strength to ‘light’ every time too, from its default ‘strong’ setting, which gives a one-pedal driving effect that I find a bit sea-sick inducing – in any car, not just the Ora.

Surprise and delight

Despite the occasional accidental rear light show, and the frequency with which the 03 commands that we “DON’T GET DISTRACTED” (usually when we’re trying to adjust the temperature or fan speed using the tiny on-screen icons), we still love the thing. Light steering, settled ride quality, quiet at town speed, fantastic cabin ambience, dead easy to park, really interesting to look at and to be in… I basically see it as a MacBook that’s running on a glitchy pre-production operating system. Worth the hassle, because it’s cool. It's pretty fuel efficient too. If you look at it in pure range terms it’s underperforming – about 140 miles from a battery with a claimed 193-mile range. But most EVs are like that, and we’re getting about 3 miles per kWh hour from it, which is very decent on a pence-per-mile basis. We’ll dig into all that in the next update, because we’ve had Pod Point out recently to install our home charger… Back to top

Mark says: “We’ve survived for more than a month charging our Ora 03 with an 03-pin plug. It’s been okay to be fair. How much difference will our new Pod Point Solo 3S home charger really make?”

How's the Ora 03 doing this month?

For about six weeks we merrily used the Ora 03 as our daily to-work-and-back car, plugging it on overnight using a three-pin socket. Having spent a considerable amount of time basically imploring people not to do this, I wasn’t that comfortable going against my own good advice. But I figured that a lot of people have taken delivery of their electric cars before having their charging point installed. And in any event, it would be a good comparison. Our charger has been fitted now, thanks to Pod Point, and we’ve been using it for a while. Here’s how the installation went, and the difference it’s made…

Been anywhere special?

The usual, really. Work and back. Work and back. Work and back. All glamour. More interesting is what’s been happening next to where the car’s usually parked: Big Charging Unit Installation. I’m told that a simple installation usually takes a couple of hours, but ours wasn’t that simple. Mainly because we live in a semi-detached townhouse with the electrical distribution board next to the front door, at the opposite side of the house to our parking space. Thankfully our space is right next to our back gate in front of our garage, a unique situation in our little estate… this is getting boring. Basically, the Pod Point engineer had to send a proper long cable all the way around the outside of the house from the front door, through the back of the garage, then back out of the front into the charging unit. Took the poor bloke about six hours. So now I have a cable running the length of my garage and a couple of little holes through the brick, but it all looks neat and tidy. (Thanks Ben, by the way. Great job.) Once the unit was installed, it was as simple as downloading the Pod Point app, using it to hook the box up to my Wi-Fi, and we were set. Our house is a fuel station now. Might start selling stale sandwiches and overpriced Peperamis.

We love:

The Pod Point Solo 3S we had installed is a new-to-market update on the company’s Solo 3 unit, adding solar panel compatibility. We don’t have solar at our house – as a resident of Newcastle, I’ve never actually seen the sun – but it’s a nice future-proof feature to add to a charging unit that’s already very good. It’s not the best-looking sphere of plastic in the world (if that matters to you), but its plug-in-and-go simplicity is mega. As is the app. One of the app’s best features is that it shows you exactly how much charge-per-session you’ve put into your car, and how much it costs, on a weekly, monthly or year-to-date basis. So, I can tell you that in May 2024 I used 402kW/h charging various cars (including other weekly test cars). I’ve spent £92.46. I’ve not kept track of how many miles that’s covered – again, weekly test cars – but what I do know is that £90 is about how much a tank of fuel costs in my own car. And we were filling that about once a week. That’s the sort of basic maths I like. Had having a home charging unit made life easier? With the Ora in particular, not massively (safety issues aside), but that's mainly because its battery is so small that three-pinning it overnight was fine. We did have a BMW i5 M60 in recently though, and the sheer size of its battery meant that using a three-pin plug would have meant 24-hour charging sessions. We're due to get a bigger-batteried Ora shortly, and being able to charge at 7kW will make a massive difference.

We're less keen on:

A couple of little quality control issues on our Ora. The ‘First Edition’ badge that was stuck to the centre console near the cupholders was coming away. It was proper bugging me. So I took it off. But you know when you buy something from TK Maxx and try to peel the price sticker off, but half of it won’t budge, so you’re left with a rank sticky residue on the thing you’re about to wrap up as a gift? No? Well, my dashboard looks like that now, anyways. Also, the driver’s side floor mat curls up and it just looks cheap. Little things, but vexing. Maybe not to you though.

Changed your opinion on anything?

The CONSTANT SAFETY BONGING is bothering me less and less. I’m not sure whether I’m just worn down and have learned to block it out, or I’ve genuinely made my peace with it. Maybe it’s doing the job? Maybe I do take my eyes off the road less these days, as a subconscious instinct to prevent from getting bonged at or told not to be distracted. There are still elements of the Ora’s infotainment and safety features that I think are just plain wrong, but I’ll tell you about those next month.

Feature of the month:

The fish. All cars seem to have an introduction jingle these days – I’ve heard one manufacturer call theirs a “handshake”, which is 100 percent unacceptable. The Ora has one. A little goldfish swims across the infotainment screen when you get into the car. At first I was like “why’s it not a tap-dancing cat?” (You know…Funky Cat.) But whatever, I realised recently that it makes everyone in the car happy when they’re getting in. A little psychological boost before a proper boring trip to Aldi or wherever. I like it. Back to top

Mark says: “It’s not really a bonanza, it just a bit of cheap alliteration to convey that we’ve swapped our Ora for another one with a bigger battery and more toys. They’re the upsides. There’s a downside though...”

How's the Ora 03 doing this month?

It’s been doing more. More miles per charge. Perfect timing really. Only a few weeks after swapping our three-pin charging situation for a proper home charging solution, we’ve now got a car with a ‘proper’ battery – a big one. The 48kWh battery in our red 03 First Edition was good for a claimed 193 miles, but the reality was closer to 150. This new white 03 has a 63kWh battery and a 260-mile claimed range, which means it’s good for post-200 miles in real life. We’ve switched our household energy tariff to an EV-specific one (Octopus Go), set our Pod Point app to work between midnight and 5am, and now every morning we wake up to a fully charged 03. We’ve levelled up, to coin a phrase. A levelling up that’s worked.

Been anywhere special?

Being able to go 50-60 miles further on a single charge is obviously a bonus. But the truth is, we were getting on just fine with the small battery because it did what it needed to do – got us around locally, basically. Personally, the more time I spend with electric cars, the more I’m convinced that the race towards bigger batteries and higher single-charge mileage puts the focus in the wrong place. For me (and feel free to @ me about this, @marksdoinggreat), a 150-mile battery is enough for most people, most of the time. Only a car that will do 400-plus miles on a motorway without charging (so, a car with an even bigger official range claim) is a proper long-distance one. And only one car currently on sale gets close to that: the 480-mile (claimed) Mercedes EQS 450+. It costs £112,000. The focus for carmakers should be on making the lightest, most affordable EVs possible, with batteries that maintain stable rapid charging speed throughout charging sessions. More cars like the Dacia Spring, basically. That will happen eventually, but we need the messaging from car manufacturers, and journalists like us, to be less about maximum range and more about how convenient (and how much cheaper) an EV with a small, efficient battery can be.

We love:

I still think that the 03 is one of the best small electric cars on sale. Love the design, love the way it drives, love the focus on cabin space (I can live with a smaller boot) and love how it’s still super rare – although that may change, of course. For now though, this is the only small hatchback – the only ‘regular car’ – I’ve ever been paparazzied in by blokes with phones. That tends to only happen in Lamborghinis and that. However, our Ora’s kerb appeal has taken a significant dip with the upgrade…

We're less keen on:

…because it’s no longer red. It’s funny, car writers like us spend very little time talking about colour and trim choice. It seems a bit…I dunno… lowbrow or something. But it’s one of the most important things people consider when buying a car. Colour choice regret can ruin how you feel about a car that you otherwise love. I’ve been there: one time I picked brown for a Skoda Yeti. So it turns out that a massive part of the reason I loved the Ora was the colour combo: red paint, beige interior, bright red dashboard. It made the car feel special. The 03 we’ve just swapped it for is white, black roof, grey dashboard. It’s made the exterior look ordinary and the interior plain dull.

Changed your opinion on anything?

Electric cars having to have a massive battery. See above.

Feature of the month:

Apple CarPlay. I can’t be alone in thinking that the 03 has one of the worst infotainment setups ever programmed. Virtually every interaction with it is needlessly frustrating. Thankfully, our ‘Pro+’ spec Ora has CarPlay. It doesn’t solve everything – the car still insists on dominating the screen with top-down camera footage of the kerb whenever your speed drops below 10mph or so – but it at least takes media and navigation out of the car’s hands. Win. Back to top