This Ora’s costing relative

PRICE: GWM’S FULL-ELECTRIC HATCH IS SAME BRACKET AS HOT HATCHES, BAKKIES AND SUVS

R60 per 100km to run, the equivalent of 2.5 litres.

Great Wall Motor (GWM) claimed their Ora range offers the country’s most affordable electric vehicle (EV) when it was launched last year.

Fast forward a few months, and nothing has changed, but “affordable” remains a skewed term in South Africa.

I have just spent two weeks running around with the top-ofthe-range GT model, which will cost about R18 500 per month off your take-home salary for the next five years.

So, one man’s affordability is clearly another man’s idea of a lottery win, but again, this is not anything to do with GWM, it’s simply the state of our economy.

With the price of petrol and diesel continuously going up, where you will feel you are winning is when it comes to filling up your Ora.

Being the GT, you get the bigger 63kWh battery (entry-level models get a 48kWh unit) and a claimed range of up to 420 kilometres in a perfect, computer-controlled world.

But we live in the real world, and just like with petrol and diesel-driven cars, these claims don’t mean much to you and me, and the best we saw was 322km after fully charging our Ora GT.

That said, without trying to save fuel or conserve energy, or whatever term you feel most comfortable using, the onboard computer showed our consumption over the two-week test period had settled on 18.4kWh per 100km.

I will save you the maths – charged at the price I pay for electricity, doing 100km cost me R60, and in petrol/diesel terms, the Ora GT used less than 2.5 litres per 100km.

What might be more important than these savings, is the little things you need to do and understand when it comes to living peacefully with an EV.

Charging is not quick. Rather put your EV on charge when get home each night, like you do with your cell phone, and you won’t be caught out if you need to go somewhere in hurry.

The faster you need to get electricity into your EV, the more it is going to cost. Charging at home is the slowest by far, but the cheapest. Make use of one of the high output rapid public chargers, and you must be prepared to pay closer to R6 per kWh.

Priced at R835 950, the Ora GT is a decent all-round package, but for this kind of money, you are going to be pulled away into everything from hot hatches to compact SUVs, to double cab bakkies first.