GWM Ora Funky Cat review - Interior, design & technology
Looks classy inside, but material quality, an awkward infotainment system, and a lack of smartphone connectivity let it down
There’s a choice of four colours with the Ora Funky Cat, and not one of them is dull silver or grey. Nebula green and Stary 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 Funky Car 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 “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. We’re told an over-the-air update is coming at the time of writing to add Apple CarPlay and Android Auto smartphone connectivity.
We hope it comes soon because while the screen looks sharp, it can take a little longer to respond to inputs on some screens than we’d like and, like the instrument cluster, it can be awkward to read due to the small font it uses. Some of the more frequently used features could be easier to find, such as the controls for the climate control system.
There are some odd features in the Funky Cat, 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, occupied, and out of the sun if you have to leave them in the car.
