
Great Wall Motor unveils $9k electric urban car with nearly 200-mile range - prostoalex
https://electrek.co/2018/12/27/great-wall-motor-ora-r1-all-electric-urban-car/
======
rconti
35kWh on a boxy vehicle? As mentioned in the article, more like 150mi range on
the standard the US uses to calculate range, and a smaller battery than some
Zero motorcycles.

Not tiny, but it's not exactly a slippery vehicle; low mass could help it do
better than a tesla-type car at lower speeds, but worse at higher speeds, I
imagine.

Charge to 90% and you're at 135mi range, leave a safety margin and now you're
looking at 100mi real world. Not bad for most day-to-day, but when you look at
real world usage and the safety margins most drivers like to use, it starts
getting dicey.

Been in a Great Wall or two. Fine cars. I wouldn't want to crash in one, but
they're engineered to a price point.

~~~
morganvachon
> I wouldn't want to crash in one

This is what is keeping my wife and I from getting her a Nissan Leaf. She
drove a Nissan Versa (basically the same platform but traditional gas engine)
until she was hit by another car. The accident was caused by a person in the
oncoming lane not seeing her and turning left, striking her driver's side
door. The other person was in a mid sized SUV (first gen Jeep Liberty) and was
only going about 15MPH when she struck my wife's car, but the force pushed my
wife's driver side door all the way into her seat and against her hip. The
Versa was severely frame damaged and not driveable; the only damage the Jeep
sustained was losing the bumper cover.

Thankfully my wife was not hurt apart from some bruising and soreness on her
hip, but if the other car had been going faster (say, at an intersection) she
could have been seriously hurt or killed. She is now driving our Crown
Victoria, a full frame vehicle with five star crash ratings all around and
reinforced doors due to being a former detective's car. Her fuel economy
sucks, and she was just moved to a more remote office at her job which makes
the Vic a very expensive commuter car now, but we're leery of getting her a
subcompact (gas, hybrid, or electric). It's probably an irrational fear; such
an accident is probably a once in a lifetime thing, but traffic is insane
where we live and work so we both feel much safer with her in "The Tank".

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
What are the crash ratings all around on the Versa? I feel you are not being
very scientific on this. She wasn’t injured in her wreck, you are
extrapolating that she would have been, but you don’t know that. Bigger is not
always better with crash safety, I see this idea espoused a lot. The old huge
rigid cars from back in the day are actually death traps because they don’t
have crumple zones and the frames are too rigid, transferring all the force to
the occupant in a crash. That’s why demolition derby contestants always get
those old full frame cars from the past, they don’t crumple and they transfer
force to the other vehicles, but also to the driver.

If the modern crown vic is 5 star rated this may not be a problem, but the
rating probably came before they added the door supports for the police, so
the car may actually be more unsafe now.

~~~
cr0sh
The crown vic police interceptor (which is likely what the op is talking
about) is a fairly "modern" vehicle; it was the go-to vehicle for police
departments across the country. Detective versions typically were white or
black only (not "cruiser" decorated), and usually lacked the interior cage and
hose-out rear seat. Other than that, they usually had the full interceptor
package (unless the dept cheaped out for the detectives, I suppose, and just
bought standard crown vics).

I'm not sure when they stopped making them, but it had to be sometime in the
early-2000s, maybe a bit later. I know that a lot of PDs went to an SUV
platform, or other vehicles.

The one potential issue with a crown vic that would make it more dangerous
that other cars is that it had a saddle fuel tank. Ford did not learn the
lesson of their Pinto. Rear-end accidents with a crown vic had the potential
to turn in to fiery death-traps. It wasn't until a police detective here in
Phoenix got horribly injured (but survived) did they make modifications to
police fleet vehicles (I think they put in a racing fuel bladder or something
like that in the tanks). I don't believe such modifications were implemented
for standard civilian crown vics...

Regardless, the crown vic isn't the same as much older vehicles. While it
likely isn't up to modern crash standards, it is still a fairly new vehicle
that does have crumple zones and such, and won't spear someone thru the heart
with the steering column in a front-end collision.

~~~
morganvachon
> The crown vic police interceptor (which is likely what the op is talking
> about) is a fairly "modern" vehicle

Yes, it is.

> I'm not sure when they stopped making them, but it had to be sometime in the
> early-2000s, maybe a bit later.

The CVPI (Crown Victoria Police Interceptor) and the Crown Victoria itself
were retired in 2011. Their immediate replacement from Ford was a Taurus based
Interceptor sedan and SUV. Most officers I know derided the new Interceptor
platform for having less acceleration and smaller interior space than the old
CV platform. Where I live, the Dodge Charger police vehicle became much more
popular after the CVPI was retired.

> The one potential issue with a crown vic that would make it more dangerous
> that other cars is that it had a saddle fuel tank. Ford did not learn the
> lesson of their Pinto. Rear-end accidents with a crown vic had the potential
> to turn in to fiery death-traps. It wasn't until a police detective here in
> Phoenix got horribly injured (but survived) did they make modifications to
> police fleet vehicles (I think they put in a racing fuel bladder or
> something like that in the tanks). I don't believe such modifications were
> implemented for standard civilian crown vics...

This is correct. The last revision of the CVPI (2004 to 2011) had a ton of
safety improvements, including to the gas tank.

> Regardless, the crown vic isn't the same as much older vehicles. While it
> likely isn't up to modern crash standards, it is still a fairly new vehicle
> that does have crumple zones and such, and won't spear someone thru the
> heart with the steering column in a front-end collision.

It's still one of the safer (for the driver) cars on the road today, though
its weight and bulk make it more likely to cause the most damage to other
vehicles in any accident it's involved in. And you're exactly right about the
steering column, it's a breakaway design. I know this because I've had to
replace a dash component that required unbolting the steering wheel and
column.

------
pard68
Something that keeps me from getting an hybrid or electric vehicle is that I
can no longer fix them. My '01 Subaru is a simple machine. When something goes
wrong there are only a few potential issues and usually it is either something
I can do myself or something my mechanic can do for less than $500.

My mechanic won't even look at electric or hybrid cars because he isn't
certified. My brother in laws hybrid Nissan had an issue over Christmas. I
took a look at it and a mechanic took a look at it (friend of the family doing
him a favor). Turned out to be an electronic issue, dealer ended up having to
replace a controller that cost north of $1200.

When they diagnosed it I did some research and discovered that I could replace
it, but much like the market for HVAC parts, I wasn't allowed to purchase the
part...

I will probably ve sticking with my Subaru and get my wife (who is looking for
a new car after hers died) an early 00s vehicle that I can still repair for
less than ridiculous prices.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
My understanding is that the failure rates are so low on electric motors, you
won’t need to fix lots of problems like on an ICE-powered vehicle. As someone
that has owned a lot of shitty gas cars and had to repair them myself, I’d
relish the chance for an electric.

~~~
foobarian
They said the LED light bulbs would last 20 years. Last week I had to replace
5 of them that failed all at the exact same time, 6 month old bulbs. Clearly
there was some kind of power surge or disturbance that the power electronics
didn't like; but yet here we are.

~~~
nine_k
The LEDs themselves likely will last 20 years (though losing some of the
brightness). The power electronics that feeds them off 110V (or 220V) is tiny
because it has to fit into the lamp's base, cannot be too expensive for
pricing reasons, but is still much more complex than the LED crystals. It has
a much higher failure rate than the light-emitting parts.

~~~
throwawaycanada
I'm sure that electric car manufacturers will have the same things to say when
people point to previous claims of extreme longevity.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Does that matter if we get off of oil in the interim? It seems the argument
should be for continuous improvement in the manufacturing process and a closed
loop recycling system for failed components and batteries.

------
alkonaut
I have a second car just for doing school runs. Never does more than 5km in a
day, never goes over 40km/h. Still it requires expensive maintenance. I have
long said I should replace it with something more like a golf-cart or electric
bike with kids in a trailer or something. This kind of car could be that. I’m
happy with a 20km range but it has to be _cheap_. The current car I use is
worth less than the cost of its overdue timing belt change.

~~~
forinti
I've long had the notion that we shouldn't drive anything heavier than a golf
cart in cities. It would be a lot safer for everyone and even teenagers could
drive them.

~~~
cr0sh
Let me know how well that works out for you here in Phoenix during the middle
of July.

For some areas of the US (notably the southwest), the summer months are
brutal. Air conditioning is virtually a requirement, not a luxury. Unless we
mandate that all businesses install showers for employees (and we change as a
society and not mind people being sweaty and smelly otherwise).

The majority of power used in a car during the summer months - beyond moving
itself and passengers - comes from the AC system. These systems can sometimes
exceed the BTU output of a house AC unit, mainly because they are fighting the
heat input from the outside constantly, due to the lack of insulation in an
automobile passenger cabin. So they have to be more powerful to offset that.
Which means they need a power system to keep up, and historically that has
been an IC engine. I'm not sure how an electric vehicle's AC system fares
during a hot summer day, or how it effects the battery charge, but I'd expect
it to be fairly heavy on that front.

Could we do as you suggest? Certainly we could; we did something similar (more
or less) for hundreds of years before automotive AC was a standard item (in
fact, the automobile was around a long time before AC became a readily
available option). At the same time, though, certain social standards were
different, plus there's the argument that cities weren't as built up or as
dense (heat island effect), making them (marginally) cooler than today.

Here in Phoenix, though - it starts to become a furnace around the end of May,
and continues until about the end of October. There are nights where it never
falls below 100F at times; most of the time it never falls below 90F at night.
There isn't an easy solution for comfortable personal transportation in such
conditions, except for the automobile as we currently know it.

~~~
Marsymars
Maybe my car's AC is underpowered, but I get much sweatier from a 15 minute
drive in my car with the AC cranked if my car's been sitting in the sun (with
black paint, black leather, moonroof) than I do from a 15 minute walk in the
same sun.

------
blackbrokkoli
Ignoring whether this is a great engineering accomplishment or not:

> In addition, the big data cloud that is created as the result of the
> information collected from the ORA app, the ORA shopping site and the Tmall
> e-shop opens the way to the development of multiple scenarios for offline
> sales

I don't see that much discussion about this trend, but I consider it a threat
to security as well as just plain bad UX. All these UX gimmicks and "features"
I already loathe in web apps, I really don't want them in my car. Pay to
unlock, tracking, remote control, AI. Sure, it's comfort, but what is the
price? At this point I prefer a 90's car where you just turn the key and it
works or don't.

Is this just "get-off-my-lawn" thinking?

~~~
Traster
I think one trend we've seen emerging in markets everywhere is that despite
competition in the market there isn't significant differentiation. So you'd
think great, we've got this tech and I'll go with the company where I pay a
little more and don't have to give up all my privacy. But instead what we end
up with is 90% of companies bundling in all the privacy invasion stuff
(because they like the new revenue stream or the share holders demand they
follow the trend or they simply can't make the margin on the product) and then
10% of companies go right to the top end, and whilst you get your privacy
you're also paying for massively premium products.

I see this in the smart home devices - you can trust NONE of them, with the
exception of a tiny minority like Apple who also then charge a fortune extra
because they're trying to sell a premium product for other reasons. So in the
end you're not overwhelmed by choice, you're railroaded.

------
zizee
Does anyone know the $$ hidden in the phrase "with incentives". If there are
20k of incentives, this press release is much less impressive than if there
are $2k of incentives.

Personally, I am very bullish on electric cars, and am hoping this is the
start of a lot of other automakers releasing affordable (to little ol me)
electric cars.

~~~
tln
This article explains it well but it's complicated. Around $9k or $7k

[https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/comparing-u.s.-and-
chines...](https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/comparing-u.s.-and-chinese-
electric-vehicle-policies)

"The subsidy program was renewed again in 2016 - up to RMB 55,000 ($8,736) for
each BEV and up to RMB 30,000 ($4,765) for each PHEV. It will decrease by 20
percent in 2017 and 2018 based on 2016’s standard"

------
PavlovsCat
Is "Great Wall Motor" a name that's supposed to appeal to English-speaking
audiences? It's not my first language, but even to me "Motor" sounds just
wrong, it should be "Motors". No matter how often I read it, it still seems
wrong.

Sorry for bikeshedding, but I don't drive a car :P

------
driverdan
Keep in mind this is with significant subsidies. A 33kWh battery pack alone
costs more than that retail. You can make anything cheap to the consumer when
you funnel tax money into it.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Like "cheap" energy from carbon emissions from coal, oil, and gas? If you
mention subsidies for EVs, must mention the MUCH larger and historically
MASSIVE subsidies all polluters have been given by dumping their garbage into
our atmosphere for free.

------
anoncoward111
Between the Chinese price competitiveness and the vulnerability the car faces
vis-a-vis 3 ton roadtrains ("Fords" and "RAMs")...

... we can be sure the US will do lots to ban importing these.

~~~
shanghaiaway
Indeed. The free market is a concept only applied to other countries, never to
the US.

~~~
anoncoward111
As an American, I've been thoroughly and continuously shocked to see how
roughly 50% of voters seem very devoted to supporting mercantilism and
cronyism, as if this somehow makes their lives better.

But then again this is also the same demographic that lines up to pay $50,000
for a truck that delivers marginal value compared to a $6,000 used Nissan or
Mitsubishi.

Especially when the majority of truck owners don't haul anything heavy
(concrete, tile, metal).

~~~
peteretep
> seem very devoted to supporting mercantilism and cronyism

America was arguably made great via the free markets and market forces. People
know this instinctively. However, these same firms now push this idea to
become rent-seekers, and I don't feel like we've seen an adjustment from the
left of politics to counter this, or point out economic market failures.

cf: safety regulations. Seen as hurting business. Yes, they stop individual
companies making super-normal profits. But that's because they're stopping
these same companies from selling the common good for profit.

Wildly off on a tangent, I wonder if we're not going to see someone running on
an anti-corruption platform at some point soon, where corruption is explicitly
inclusive of: lobbying, rent-seeking, gerrymandering, and so on.

~~~
anoncoward111
I hope someone does run but I'm not optimistic they would deliver.

I am biased. I hate regulation because it isn't applied fairly.

My gf's parents had their dry cleaner business shut down by NY state, who
fined them $50,000 for allegedly failing to dispose of chemicals. They never
paid, NY state never sued.

However, Lawrence Aviation Co DID dump chemicals in NY state that permanently
destroyed the water supply in Port Jefferson NY.

The owner was fined $100,000, a small percentage of his networth compared to
my gf's parents who are paycheck to paycheck.

He served 1 year in prison despite potentially poisoning the 100,000 people
who were on the local water supply.

~~~
shanghaiaway
American-style democracy aka managed democracy aka inverted totalitarianism

------
ryanmarsh
$9k? That’s less than a Tesla battery pack.

 __checks specs __

62mph top speed, 33kwh battery, 150mi real world range, looks like the size of
a smart car. Yep. No surprises here.

I bet the fit and finish is worse than a Ford Ranger

------
baybal2
> In addition, the big data cloud that is created as the result of the
> information collected from the ORA app, the ORA shopping site and the Tmall
> e-shop opens the way to the development of multiple scenarios for offline
> sales and services as well as new transportation services for both drivers
> and passengers.”

In other words: a vending machine calling itself a car.

------
Tobias42
Interesting vehicle, but the design is such a rip-off. Honda Urban EV in the
front and Smart forfour in the back.

It would be interesting to know what the unsubsidized price is and if it ever
comes to the west.

The e.Go Life has a similar concept but does not seem to be able to compete on
price or battery capacity.

------
rwmj
This actually has almost the same range as my petrol car - it's a terrible Kia
automatic with a microscopic gas tank that gets 225 miles on a full tank. I
suppose these won't be sold in Europe because they don't pass safety
standards?

------
sparkpeasy
How do these do in a crash test?

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
We get a fair few of them (edit: Great Walls, not this new model) in
Australia, and they're pretty universally considered utter crap. From
reliability to crash tests, they consistently just don't live up to the
marketing and hype. Sure they're cheap, but this seems to very much be a "you
get what you pay for" cheap, not a "great bang for buck" cheap.

Personally I've only been in 1, one of the newer utes, and it felt like a 15
yr old base-model rental, despite being brand new and spec'd out.

Few examples of previous models bombing their testing:

> The budget Great Wall Steed ute has scored a shocking two stars in the
> latest round of ANCAP crash testing, against the 2016 ratings criteria.

[https://www.caradvice.com.au/545184/great-wall-steed-
flunks-...](https://www.caradvice.com.au/545184/great-wall-steed-flunks-ancap-
test-with-two-star-rating/)

> Chinese Haval H9 SUV slammed in world first independent crash test,
> conducted in Australia

> [...]sales of Chinese vehicles have almost come to standstill in Australia
> after safety recalls of Great Wall Motors utes due to asbestos components
> and poor crash test ratings of earlier models in recent years.

[https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/motoring/chine...](https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/motoring/chinese-
haval-h9-suv-slammed-in-world-first-independent-crash-test-conducted-in-
australia/news-story/6adc49925357489ddea1a4ea88ff2427)

~~~
peteretep
> they're pretty universally considered utter crap. From reliability to crash
> tests, they consistently just don't live up to the marketing and hype

If I remember my history correctly, this used to be true of Japanese exports
too (and Taiwanese, and Korean, et al). Hopefully the Chinese will improve
with time, and start to be known for high-quality exports!

------
Markoff
there is one more reasons why electric cars are popular in Beijing or
shanghai, good luck getting license plate for gasoline engine and license
plate itself will cost almost as much as this car

if you would have to pay free thousands euros just for license plate and even
to get it you would have to win lottery, most if the people would think twice
about buying gasoline engine cars

------
cauldron
If your definition of eletric car is just car with a battery and engine
then...

[https://twitter.com/GeorgStieler/status/1075195222953349120](https://twitter.com/GeorgStieler/status/1075195222953349120)

------
codazoda
Wish we could get cheap cars in the U.S. Our prices are crazy.

I recall hearing the smart car could be sold cheaply in its original country,
but after importing it and meeting all U.S. requirements, the price
quadrupled.

~~~
Tade0
> Wish we could get cheap cars in the U.S. Our prices are crazy.

They are actually lower than in Europe, mind you.

The Scion iM a.k.a. Toyota Auris _starts_ at ~$17k. in Europe to give an
example.

------
qaq
Is there some rule somewhere that electric cars have to be fugly? (with some
notable exceptions obviously)

------
newnewpdro
Without AMP (actually works in with noscript):
[https://electrek.co/2018/12/27/great-wall-motor-
ora-r1-all-e...](https://electrek.co/2018/12/27/great-wall-motor-ora-r1-all-
electric-urban-car/)

