Chinese Great Wall begins selling Ora 3 electric hatchbacks on Russian market
MOSCOW. Oct 25 (Interfax) - Chinese automobile company Great Wall Motors (GWM) announced the start of sales in Russia of their Ora 3 compact electric hatchback.
The launch of the model was announced Wednesday at a GWM press conference in Moscow with the participation of the general director of Russian GWM brands distributor, Haval Motor Rus, Li Kai, the company's executive director Andrey Akifiev, and the director of product line development strategy Alexander Zubik.
As Akifiev said during the press conference, over the first nine months of 2023, GWM quadrupled its sales in the Russian market, selling more than 84,500 vehicles from the three brands represented in Russia: Great Wall pickups, Haval crossovers and Tank SUVs. The bulk of the volume (73,600 cars) came from the Haval brand, including 36,400 Haval Jolion vehicles, which were included at the end of last year in preferential car lending and leasing programs. Since 2019, Haval cars have been in full-cycle production at the Tula Automobile Plant (Haval Motor Manufacturing Rus LLC), the Chinese automaker's only Russian production facility. The company currently produces five models: the Jolion, F7, F7x, Dargo and the H9.
"GWM is taking the next strategic step - the consecutive launch in Russia of two brands running on a new type of energy, Ora and Wey. This means that, starting next year, the entire portfolio of GWM brands will be represented in our country," Akifiev said.
The Ora 3 electric compact hatchback, which is already sold in Europe under the name Ora Funky Cat, is available as of today in Russia at 34 Tank brand dealerships located in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Krasnodar, Yekaterinburg, Vladivostok, and others. By the end of the year, the chain plans to expand to 54 dealerships. The car is available in both Premium and GT trim levels. The overall length of the electric car is 4.235 meters, and the declared range on one battery charge is up to 500 km. The estimated time to replenish the battery's energy reserve from 15% to 80% when using a fast charging station is 42 minutes.
"We expect that by the end of this year, about 20,000 electric cars will be sold in the Russian Federation. We are also making optimistic plans and believe that in 2024 this number could more than double. It is quite difficult to predict what will happen next. However, we believe our market demonstrates a demand that we would like to satisfy here," Akifiev said, without indicating sales targets for Ora 03 for this year or the next.
Haval Motors Rus is planning to launch Wey brand crossovers in Russia in Q1 2024. The first will be the Wey 05, a large crossover with a total hybrid power plant capable of 295 hp. (ICE and one electric motor on each axle).
According to the SPARK-Interfax analytical system, revenues for Haval Motor Rus LLC in 2022 increased 38% to 81.2 billion rubles.