Nicholas Carmichael's garage in Brisbane holds two very different cars. There's a 2004 VW New Beetle with a manual transmission — "quirky and fun," he calls it — and parked next to it now sits something brand new: a 2025 Great Wall ORA, nicknamed "Good Cat." Six months ago, Carmichael was splitting his daily drives between the Eclipse Cross, a practically new petrol Mitsubishi, and that little green Beetle. Today, he's saved $400 on fuel in just one month and says he'll never go back to petrol.
The ORA launched in 2023 as the cheapest electric vehicle available in Australia. Since then, the company has sold about 3,000 units across the country. The car has a retro, rounded design that reminded Carmichael immediately of his beloved Beetle — but with none of the noise.
"The main adjustment has been the silence," Carmichael said. "The speed increasing with no noise or power curve." He now drives the Beetle and feels the 20-year-old car "seems 20 years older than it already is" compared to his new electric daily driver.
Carmichael first became interested in the ORA when he read that GWM was discontinuing the hatchback model in favor of a new SUV-style version called the Ora 5. He tracked down the last available model in the Brisbane area and worked out a trade-in deal with his Mitsubishi. He's been driving it since mid-May.
In just a few months, the ORA has covered more than 3,000 kilometers — trips to Toowoomba (about 100 kilometers away) for swimming events, regular runs to the Gold Coast for training, and visits to his parents in Tin Can Bay, which is 224 kilometers up the coast. The car can travel up to 400 kilometers on a single charge, and it uses an LFP battery, a type of battery that's considered stable and long-lasting.
For charging, Carmichael treats his car like his phone: he mostly plugs it in overnight. He charges using solar power from his home and takes advantage of lower nighttime electricity rates meant for electric vehicles. He's already booked an appointment to install a faster 7-kilowatt home charger. On longer trips, he uses a mix of free public chargers, Tesla Superchargers, and the Evie charging network — whatever works best for the route.
The savings add up. In one month, Carmichael calculated that charging the ORA cost him far less than filling the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross with petrol would have. The difference came to about $400. "I gave up when it got to $400 saving," he said, noting that most of the cost came from public charging, not from charging at home.
Beyond the money, Carmichael loves the little things: the light bar in the rear window, the two-tone retro-styled interior, the green paint matched with a black roof, and the quilted leather details on the door panels. "It's really hard to say something bad about the car," he said.
He still owns the Beetle — some cars are just too fun to let go. But for everyday driving, the ORA has won him over completely. "When I drive the Beetle, I take my foot off the accelerator and expect it to slow down by itself — it doesn't," he said. His electric car, meanwhile, uses a feature called high regen mode, which recovers energy when slowing down and makes one-pedal driving possible. It feels like the future, he says, and he has no plans to look back.