Buyers of the Ora Good Cat, which has a starting price of around 100,000 yuan (US$15,700), say when they complained they were offered a package of store credit including subsidized charging, free software updates and app memberships.
For many owners, that didn’t cut it. Now, some are demanding new chips for their cars or full refunds and compensation, saying the inferior processors have had a significant impact on their user experience, with some functions not working properly.
In a statement issued by a WeChat group of aggrieved Good Cat-owners, which was shared with Caixin, they accused the company of being “evasive” in its response and demanded it explains how the situation occurred. One lawyer who has been interacting with buyers in preparation for possible legal action says Ora’s actions could constitute “consumer fraud”. Ora, which initially responded to questions from Caixin, did not respond to that allegation.
Fishy chips - Claims emerged online last month from owners of the Ora Good Cat that the chip installed in the digital cockpits of their vehicles was an Intel processor released in 2016, and not the more advanced Qualcomm octa-core processor advertised by the carmaker. As a result, some said, the electric hatchback’s entertainment system’s third-party app options were seriously limited.
In a statement published on its mobile app on Nov 22, Ora conceded that the Good Cat models which hit the market a year earlier were not equipped with Qualcomm chips. Those were meant for future models, the firm said, adding that it had advertised the new chips “prematurely”.
Great Wall Motor, Ora’s parent company, later apologized for what it said was a marketing issue.
Older processors - In a since-removed ad for the Good Cat seen by Caixin, Ora had touted a “Qualcomm-powered in-car smart service platform” within its Ora Smart-cafe OS, referring to a platform launched in July 2020 that incorporates three systems — an intelligent cockpit, intelligent driving and intelligent services such as cross-device connectivity.
The Qualcomm processor advertised referred to the Snapdragon SA8155P, a cockpit chip described by the US chipmaker as “an integrated, next-generation automotive cockpit platform”, and used in the in-car systems of models such as the Weltmeister W6, Geely Auto’s Xingyue L and Xpeng’s P5, Caixin understands, while the chip installed in the Ora Good Cats was the Intel A3940, released in 2016.
Qualcomm’s 7-nanometer chip was released in 2018 and had begun launching in mass-produced vehicle models in 2020. The chip is currently the first choice for smart cockpit chips among mainstream new-energy vehicle companies.
By comparison, the Intel A3940 is a quad-core chip that adopts a 14-nanometer process, and its performance lags behind its newer competitor and has weaker compatibility in terms of application ecosystem. Qualcomm’s chips cost around twice as much as Intel’s.
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