GWM Ora 03 - Interior, design & technology
The GWM Ora 03 looks classy inside, but material quality and an awkward infotainment system let it down
There’s a choice of four colours with the GWM Ora 03, and not one of them is dull silver or grey. Nebula green and Starry black are both single colours and have a black interior theme, whereas Aurora green and Mars red are two-tone, with similar bi-colour interiors: green and beige for the former and red and beige for the latter.
You get some flimsy-feeling, chrome-effect toggle switches, which look similar to what you’ll find on a MINI Electric. It isn’t all retro because there are plenty of screens, from the 10.25-inch digital instrument cluster to the 12.5-inch central touchscreen – we’ll discuss how the latter works later. The former can show you quite a lot of information, but it isn’t intuitive to use and can be hard to read at a glance with its light background and small font.
Besides the soft-touch materials on the top of the dashboard, the rest of the 03 interior is made of hard plastics. They’re not all that impressive to the touch, and neither is the flimsy-feeling centre console. Then there are the touch-sensitive “lit-when-on” steering controls that are very similar to what you’ll find on a Volkswagen ID.3 and aren’t as easy to use as the physical buttons and toggles you’ll find on an MG4.
Sat-nav, stereo and infotainment
The infotainment system comes with a DAB radio and sat-nav as standard. The latter works quite well, while the six-speaker audio system sounds fine – although being an electric car, it doesn’t have to contend with the extra noise of an engine. Full smartphone connectivity in the form of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto has been added on a ‘beta basis’ to Pro+ versions of the 03, but we didn’t find it to be all that impressive because it frequently disconnected from our Android test phone.
The infotainment screen looks sharp, although it can take a little longer to respond to inputs than we’d like. Some of the more frequently used features, such as the controls for the climate control system, could be easier to find. The driver’s instrument cluster can be awkward to read due to the small font it uses.
There are some odd features in the 03, such as the child mode. It seems a little creepy when it starts rolling up the windows, increasing the fan speed of the air-con system and putting on the sound of a wind-up music box on the stereo. It's all done to keep children cool, their attention occupied, and out of the sun if you have to leave them in the car.
