Great Wall Motor does not build many cars like the ORA Black Cat: a 5-door hatchback, built from 2019 to 2022 as electrification stopped being an experiment and the crossover took every market.
How it came about
The Ora Black Cat (Chinese: 欧拉黑猫; pinyin: Ōulā Hēimāo), also known as the R1 is a battery electric city car produced by the Chinese car manufacturer Great Wall Motors and sold under its electric vehicle sub-brand, Ora, from 2019 to 2022. The Black Cat was unveiled at the Shanghai Motor Show in April 2019. Great Wall Motors announced that Ora R1 renamed to Ora Black Cat at the Chongqing Auto Show in July 2020. In February 2022, Ora confirmed that the Black Cat was discontinued in China.
The hardware
it is rated at 35 kW (47 hp. Kerb weight is 977 kg. Power-to-weight lands near 36 horsepower per tonne, which is leisurely, which for a car of its age and purpose is the point. The gearbox is a 1-speed direct-drive. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is 2475 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
Where it sits in Great Wall Motor's history is not in doubt: the Great Wall Peri came before it; it was built at Taizhou, Zhejiang (GWM Taizhou Smart Factory), China. On a showroom list of its day it stood against the Honda N-Van, the Daihatsu Taft (LA900), the Daihatsu Mira Tocot. Its Great Wall Motor stablemates include the Great Wall Coolbear and the Great Wall Cowry.