ORA Logo

ORA (欧拉) is the electric-vehicle brand of the Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor, and its badge is one of the more distinctive marks in the EV sector: a single exclamation mark. That punctuation is not a styling flourish. In its 2018 brand release, Great Wall Motor stated that the ORA brand logo is derived from the exclamation mark, described as a salute and greeting to Mr. Euler, to users and to the world, and as a sign of the surprise the new brand hoped to bring.

The choice of an exclamation mark ties directly to the name. ORA is named in homage to the mathematician Leonhard Euler, and the company also presents the letters as standing for Open, Reliable and Alternative. The Chinese brand name 欧拉 is a direct rendering of Euler’s name.

ORA Logo PNG

What the ORA emblem represents

The official ORA brand page offers a fuller reading of the same mark. It describes the logo as an exclamation mark interpreting the birth of light. The lower dot is framed as the origin of all energy and of each person’s unique self, while the upper beam represents the path of light breaking out, the gathering of that energy and the trajectory of exploring and influencing the world. The summary the brand uses is that the origin is the self and the light is all of us.

That interpretation is presented as the brand’s current wording. Available sources do not establish when this reading was first published, so it should not be assumed to date from the brand’s launch.

Launch and early identity

ORA emerged as Great Wall Motor’s dedicated new-energy vehicle brand in 2018, sitting alongside Haval, WEY and the Great Wall name. The brand premiered in April 2018 at the Beijing motor show with three vehicles shown under the ORA banner: the iQ crossover alongside the R1 and R2 at the Beijing debut. Reporting at the time treated the R1 and R2 as show vehicles rather than confirmed production models.

Great Wall Motor then formally released ORA as an independent NEV brand on 20 August 2018, publishing a brand manifesto alongside the announcement. The first production model, the ORA iQ, followed at the Chengdu show in August 2018, priced from RMB 89,800 to RMB 105,800. Chinese launch coverage noted that the letters “ORA” were set into the tailgate trim of the iQ, making the plain wordmark the most visible element of the identity on the car itself.

The 2018 plan was China-first, with export activity framed as a future consideration rather than an immediate global rollout.

The “cat” naming era

Over 2019 and 2020, ORA’s Chinese line-up was reorganised around a “cat” theme. The R1 became the Black Cat, joined by a White Cat, and the Good Cat arrived in November 2020. These were model-name changes rather than badge changes: the exclamation-mark emblem stayed in place across the range.

When ORA entered Europe, the Good Cat was renamed Funky Cat for that market. The European launch came in 2022, meaning the marque travelled under one emblem but several different model names depending on region.

One GWM and the numeric renaming

The clearest identity shift came later and concerned naming, not artwork. On 22 November 2023, Great Wall Motor announced a “One GWM” naming strategy, effective January 2024, in which the Funky Cat became the ORA 03 and the saloon previously known as the Next Cat or Lightning Cat became the ORA 07. The company said the vehicles were physically unchanged.

At the time of that change, GWM stated that there were no changes to dealerships, corporate identity or marketing. The move restructured how the brand was packaged inside a house of brands, turning ORA into a product line within a broader GWM retail presence in some markets. UK ORA dealers were later rebranded to GWM as additional marques were added to the network.

Has the ORA logo been redesigned?

No emblem redesign is documented. The exclamation-mark mark has been in continuous use since the brand’s 2018 launch, and the changes that followed were naming and brand-architecture decisions rather than new artwork. What has evolved is the surrounding wordmark packaging and model nomenclature, not the core symbol. Descriptions of the emblem as an ellipse or as a black-and-white sans-serif construction are not supported by the brand’s own documentation, which consistently anchors the mark in the exclamation mark and its stated meanings.