Ora Good Cat Gets Top Safety Marks From Euro NCAP

Chinese cars haven’t always been known to lead the pack in terms of crash safety, but the Ora Good Cat turns that stereotype on its head, receiving a stellar 5-star rating from the famously fussy Euro NCAP.

The Good Cat (or Funky Cat as it's known there) is a fully electric hatchback by Ora, a subsidiary brand under Great Wall Motors (GWM), and happens to be one of the models tapped to spearhead the automaker’s major re-entry into the Malaysian market.

Ora Good Cat gets Euro NCAP 5-star rating

Alongside this, Euro NCAP also slapped a 5-star rating on the Great Wall Wey Coffee 01, elsewhere known as the Wey Mocha. While the Good Cat is a full EV, the Coffee 01 is offered either solely with a combustion engine or paired with an electric motor in a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) configuration. However, both are built on GWM’s unifying LEMON platform.

The Good Cat scored a very solid 92% for Adult Occupancy, 83% for Child Occupant safety and 93% for its Safety Assist features in both comprehensiveness and tested functionality.

In its post-evaluation report, Euro NCAP remarked: “The Funky Cat’s autonomous emergency braking (AEB) system performed well in tests of its reaction to other vehicles, with collisions avoided or mitigated in most test scenarios. A seatbelt reminder system is fitted as standard to the front and rear seats and the car is equipped with a system to detect driver fatigue and distraction,”

“The lane support system gently corrects the vehicle’s path if it is drifting out of lane, and also intervenes in some more critical situations. The speed assistance system detects the local speed limit and the driver can choose to allow the maximum speed of the car to be automatically set by the system.”

Euro NCAP secretary general, Michiel van Ratingen, said: “We’ve seen good results from some Chinese manufacturers in the past, but also some very poor ones. This year, Euro NCAP will test more Chinese cars than it has ever done and Great Wall really sets the standard for others to follow.”

This bodes well for buyers wondering about any potential gap in safety between newer vehicles of Chinese origin versus some more established marques, especially as GWM and Chery are pipped to aggressively enter the Malaysian market with electrified and fully electric cars alike with ambitions of local assembly in the pipeline.