How good is this FUNKY small electric car? The ORA 03 in-depth review UK
Hi guys Tish here and welcome back to my Channel autoo UK testing all of these cars it takes a really special car to actually Peak my interest enough to buy one it has to be affordable first and foremost that’s really important to me it also has to be of course competitive
And lastly it has to be fun a car for me to buy needs to make me smile every time I look at it and when the aura funky cat was first announced for the UK this was a car that did exactly that for me hi guys welcome back to the channel now
Really excitingly though absolutely loving the look of this electric car I’ve only ever reviewed it on electr heads and I’ve never actually spent any extended time with it and we better to do it than now when I’ve got a bit more knowledge when it comes to electric cars
And I’ve even just recently got my at home wallbox so I can now experience what it’s like to be an electric car owner and that fell just in time for Aura to have opened in Baron Edmonds and they asked me Tish why don’t you spend a couple of weeks with the funky cat
Formerly funky cat now 03 to find out if it’s as good as you hoped it would be so in today’s video I’m going to tell you exactly how I found this car living with it for the past week and a half so if that’s sounds good then please keep
Watching if you like new car reviews and car content hit the Subscribe button and if you wanted to test drive the funky cat O3 for yourself then you can do that at berryon Edmond’s Aura so first off let’s talk about the styling because let’s face it this is the standout
Feature of this car no longer funky by name but it’ll always be funky by Nature this car is super quirky and it definitely divides opinions but I think some of the best cars in history do divide opinions and interestingly when I’ve asked men what they think about
This car they either don’t like it or they’re unsure whereas women tend to like it a lot more and I’m glad for that we need more cars which are targeted towards women that doesn’t mean that men can’t like these especially in the black with the black interior it’s much more
Palatable but I love that it’s bit quirky a little bit different it makes people smile it reminds me a lot of my favorite girly cars on the market the fear 500 the Volkswagen Beetle and of course because of those round headlamps the iconic mini and one of my favorite
Features is in these round headlamps so these are LED and they’re also automatically high beam assist as standard but they have a lovely feature when you unlock it where you get this kind of circling lights I just think it’s a little bit quirky and it’s a really nice feature
Definitely at this angle you’ll see that kind of beetle appearance about it so how big is this car well it’s around the same size as an I3 that makes it a great versatile family car but whereas on the ID3 they’ve kind of focused on a lot of
Boot space and not quite as much space in the back with this car it’s got quite small boots but loads of space in the back so I’ll show you that in a moment and of course I’m not completely head over here about this car there are
Things that I’m not going to like and one of the things is so small but it’s just this little honeycomb detail see I can barely find it just on the bottom here I know that they’ve done that so it doesn’t have quite such a flowing design
But I just think it looks a tiny bit like you’ve bumped it into a wall the alloy wheels are really nice all versions of this car come on alloy wheels so no hub caps found here and they have that quirky kind of retro I feel about them they remind me of a very
Similar style that you get on the Volkswagen be in fact I had those Wheels because I loved how it looked retro you also get some really nice color options my favorite is the mint green I’m pretty sure we get that in the UK and I’m so
Upset that you have to go to irand to get the kind of mocka color I really wish we’d got that personally to me it’s not my favorite in red I really like the darker blue colors or the mint green but it does look really good and you get the
Contrasting black roof and you also get the Black Wing mirrors so boot space let’s talk about it because Aura with this car really have focused on rear space rather than the boot space and that means it is quite compact in here you’ll find 228 L now that’s going to be enough for
A weekly shop for a couple of suitcases and for most of your day-to-day needs but if you are a wheelchair user or if you’ve got a push chair then you may need to opt for one of the larger models which will be coming out of Aura in the
Next couple of years you may be wondering something looks like it’s missing but what is it well it’s the rear lights so whereas on standard cars on the market you’ll find the lights kind of on the edges of the car they’re almost hidden when it comes to this one
So on this car you’ll find the rear lights built into the back window just adding to that quirkiness are you ready to ramp up the controversial styling well check out the interior of this car this really is very out there and I know that you’re probably going to predict this I love it
I think it’s so cool once again like the external color if I was going to get this car it probably would wouldn’t be in red I love the Blue version of this you get this very nice teal dashboard if you don’t want something which is quite
So in your face you can go for black interior instead which I have actually done a little bit of footage with one of those so I’m going to inut that now but this version if you want something which is going to brighten your day and make
You smile it’s got to be this it’s so cool right you get this kind of leather effect on the dashboard which is slightly sedy and then you get the contrasting stitching and you’ve also got the contrasting element on the steering wheel you’ve got the red leather and then you’ve got the cream
Lever with the red stitching it’s very very cool in terms of quality it’s a bit mixed so everything higher up the cabin the seats the armrest the dashboard the doors are all lovely but as you get a little bit further down then you have got some cheaper scratchier Plastics but
I actually don’t think it’s that much of a problem overall I just think think it’s so much fun in here they’ve really dared to go outside of the box and this is not often something we see in the UK they play it very safe so it’s nice to
Have something which is a little bit different interestingly having the appearance of a smaller car this car is actually quite a lot more practical when it comes to rear space as the ex30 which I tested last week the rear doors open much wider so getting in is far simpler
Of course there are some slight negatives and that small negative is there’s not much space between the floor and where you sit Therefore your knees come up quite high but both leg room shoulder space and head room are more than sufficient especially for a small car and the sturdy armrest with cup
Holders and the USB charging just Aid in its practicality as a family car to those of you who the funky cats or the 03 is not a new car you may may remember that even before they launched in the UK one of the headline things that they
Said about it was it could be under 20,000 and that was a huge Prospect because it would make it one of the cheapest electric cars on sale in the UK and then it arrived and it started from in upwards of 30,000 that’s quite a big difference and it was a big shame but
Why the huge price hike well it is actually Justified you see whilst many car Browns for instance like the dacher with the spring and also the Citron with the C3 have chosen to make their car not quite as safe but to go for affordability this car being a new brand
Into the UK wanted to make sure that they had a really safe offering and to me that makes sense because if you’re going to take a risk on a brand that you haven’t heard before you probably want it to be as safe as possible and that is
Exactly what they’ve done you see as stand standard this car comes with all of these safety features and are you ready because it’s a big list adaptive cruise control intelligent turning control intelligent cruise control traffic jam assist Lane assist Lane departure warning intelligent evade high beam assist auto headlights millimeter
Wave Radars ultrasonic Radars low speed emergency braking front Collision warning Auto emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection Junction assist rear cross traffic alert and Brak rear Collision warning blind spot detection Lane change assist door opening warning LED headlights emergency steering function traffic sign recognition driver fatig detection speed
Limit alert cruise control limit driver and front passenger airbags Center airbag front and side airbags and curtain airbag front and rear seat belt with pretensioner and low limiter rear isopix mounts seat belt unfastened 2 hours later block eal intelligent motion detection and an anti- theft alarm horn
So this car gets every single bit of expensive safety equipment that they could throw at it and that means it makes it a slightly more expensive car so that’s kind of the tradeoff that you’re getting it may have had a price hike but the reason be behind that is
Because you’re actually getting a five-star endcap rating and awarded by encap the safest small car that you can buy I was pre-warned before I drove this car that the safety features can be quite intrusive and at first I definitely found this the steering systems and also the facial recognition
Will make sure that you’re behaving yourself which is never a negative but it can be a little bit intrusive to start with the good news is all of these systems can actually be turned off almost completely the only one that you’ll need to turn on and off is that
Active Lane assist but everything else can be switched off this means that unlike Hyundai products and Kia products which every single time you get in the car you have to turn off your speed warning that’s when you go over the speed limit with this car once you turn
It off it stays off so it means that it will keep you nice and safe if you want to use it but actually if you if you don’t want them to be intrusive you can turn them off completely it gets a very respectable 170 brake horsepower and it
Will go from not to 62 in around 8.3 seconds so it’s not the quickest or sportiest car but I think that’s pretty good and just like a lot of electric cars it has a nice buildup of its speed that’s one thing that I found quite good
About this car is it doesn’t have that kind of really instant acceleration which can leave your wheels spinning it actually builds the power nicely when I was doing my research not many people really enjoyed the drive of this car they said that it wasn’t very engaging
And it could be a little bit crashy and that surprised me because over this week I’ve actually really enjoyed it one of the things that did surprise me about it is just how well weighted the steering is it has a nice weighted about it and that means that you feel slightly more
Connected to the road and that’s paired together with the fact that this car sits a little bit lower it means that you get that engagement that you lose in a lot of its SUV Rivals it comes fitted with a fairly modest 48 KW hour battery and that gives
You a claimed range of 193 miles according to Aura I’ve been spending time with this car when it’s been pretty chilly and actually very very wet I’ve gone through a lot of flood water and torrential rain in this car and I’ve been seeing closer to 15 50 to 180
Depending on how warm it’s been and I don’t think that’s too bad in the summer if you’re spending time with this car I can easily see you getting between 180 and 190 miles in terms of charging it takes around 7 and 1/2 hours from a standard at home wallbox and speaking of
Which it’s been an absolute pleasure spending time with an electric car and being able to top up at home it leaves me with pretty much no range anxiety I’ve done trips to Cambridge trips to London and I know that I can do all of these Journeys there and back without
Having to stop and public charge as it has enough charge to get me to most places and back if you do need a public charge this is where this car slightly loses out it has a maximum charging speed of 63 KW that’s slightly behind some other brands and it means that if
You are doing a lot of long Journeys then you’re going to be sitting at the Chargers for a little bit longer compared to other competitors in the market but if you’re only doing short Journeys I can’t see it being a problem next up we’re going to talk about tech
Because it’s a pretty big deal in this car it comes with loads of tech as standard the usual things you get include satellite navigation you also get wireless phone charging and on all versions you get a rear view parking camera which I found to work work really really well especially for when moving
In kind of small distances you get a really good feel of where the car is using that 360 camera it gets an AI assistant which can either be woken up by using a voice command which you set or you can press this button on the steering wheel what’s the weather going to be
Like today today in field looks like it will be mostly with a high of eight and low of Zer degrees it’s also really handy for setting your locations get me directions to Baron Edmonds Baron Edmond England United Kingdom right there is loads of functions you
Can use this for it can open the windows and various other things it can also do things like play games with you I’m going to do a full Tech dive of this car on the channel so that includes the AI assistant as well as lots of other
Function so if you want to see that then make sure you are subscribed to the channel and keep an eye out for it plus if you had any Tech questions then please do let me know and I’ll try and answer them in terms of usability of
Course a lot of things are in the touchcreen like you’ll getting a lot of other cars nowadays and whilst it takes a short time to get used to it’s really well laid out and it’s simple to find everything so that concludes my week spent with this fun and quirky electric
Car sure it’s not perfect but then very few cars are however if you want a car which is seriously safe and is going to get people chatting to you about how interesting and different it is then I think it’s a great option of course you also have those really enticing low
Monthly fees which mean that this is a great step into the electric car market but let me know what do you think of the aura funky cat or the aura 03 is this an option that you’ve been looking at what else are you looking at let me know in
The comments down below if you did have any further questions or if you wanted to test drive one for yourself then you can do that at berryon Edmonds Aura I really hope you have enjoyed the video today guys if you have go ahead and give
It a big thumbs up want to see more then hit the Subscribe button and until next time see you later n
Check out the ORA 03 for yourself at GWM ORA Marriott Bury St Edmunds – https://www.gwmoramarriottburystedmunds.co.uk/ora-03/?utm_source=video&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=autosocialuk
If you want to support the channel by donating me a coffee then you can do so here: https://ko-fi.com/tishautosocialuk (I am very grateful but please ONLY if you can afford to, there is no obligation and I still love each and every one of you!
Want to see new Auto Social UK content every day? Then make sure you’re following me on both Instagram: https://instagram.com/auto_social_uk and TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@autosocialuk?
