Great Wall Motor’s Ora EV Mired in User Complaints Regarding Downgraded Chips

Since November this year, some car owners have reported that the computer chips loaded in Great Wall Motor’s electric vehicle (EV) brand Ora are not consistent with official advertisements, arousing widespread public concern in recent days.

Founded in August 2018, Ora is the first independent new energy automobile brand to originate from a mainstream Chinese automobile enterprise, as well as the first one positioned towards female users.

On November 24, 2020, Ora’s Haomao model was officially launched. As the first pure EV built by Great Wall’s Lemon Platform and Coffee Intelligent Ecology, the Haomao model maintains a strong selling performance based on its retro design. From January to November, 2021, its cumulative sales volume reached 40,246 units.

Ora did not explicitly say its hot-selling Haomao model uses chips from Qualcomm, but these specifications correspond to those of the Snapdragon 8155 processor currently used by mainstream EV makers in their flagship models. However, some users discovered that the model sold in China used an Atom A3940 chip with four cores released by Intel in the fourth quarter of 2016.

According to relevant media reports, on November 22, Ora responded that the Haomao model currently for sale has not been equipped with a Qualcomm chip, adding that the chip was originally scheduled to be installed in future models.

The incident has also attracted the attention of China’s state broadcaster CCTV, which has been following the story recently. “We promise to seriously investigate the incident and give consumers a satisfactory reply,” said Dong Yudong, general manager of Ora.

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While CCTV followed up on the matter, some car owners found that the overseas version of Ora’s Haomao model was equipped with Qualcomm chips.

Great Wall Motor’s differential treatment of Chinese and foreign consumers has further stimulated the dissatisfaction of netizens.

On Thursday, Ora officially issued a statement saying that after the incident was exposed, Great Wall Motor has taken it very seriously and has asked the Ora brand to verify and correct the content of the official website and give owners a satisfactory answer. Ora also launched some compensation schemes for impacted consumers.