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In a filing published on March 17, 2025, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology revealed an upgraded Ora Ballet Cat. Great Wall Motors' Beetle-inspired electric hatchback swaps its old 169-hp motor for a 201-hp unit, adds a lithium-iron-phosphate battery pack, and sees its top speed climb to 112 mph. The paperwork, first spotted by CarNewsChina, signals that Ora intends to keep its retro act alive — just with more pace.
When Volkswagen sold its last American Beetle in 2019, it ended a run that spanned nearly eight decades. The Final Edition models sold quickly, tributes poured in, and then the nameplate went quiet. VW's electric ID. family has since grown into a full lineup, but there's no electric Beetle among them. Every concept and one-off build has fizzled without a production commitment.
The nostalgia around the Beetle is hard to overstate. The Type 1 stayed in production for 65 years and sold by the millions. Even the later New Beetle won hearts with its egg-shaped charm and a dashboard that came with a flower vase. Ora's version taps straight into that goodwill, repackaged for Chinese drivers who grew up watching Herbie movies instead of riding in a family Bug.
Ora is the EV subsidiary Great Wall launched for young, design-conscious buyers, and the Ballet Cat appeared in 2022 as a four-door take on the original air-cooled Beetle. Arched fenders, rounded roofline, two-tone paint, and exactly enough modern detailing to avoid a straight copy. Cute would be an understatement. It draws looks at every stoplight, which is precisely the point.
The Ballet Cat's main change is mechanical. The outgoing motor makes 169 horsepower; the replacement produces 201. That 32-hp jump won't turn the little car into a hot hatch, but it should make it genuinely quicker in city traffic and more relaxed on open roads.
Top speed rises from 96 mph to 112 mph — 155 to 180 km/h, the figures that actually register in China. Expressway limits there sit around 120 km/h, so the old car technically had enough. The new one has reserve, which is what matters for overtakes, merges, and long grades.
The battery switches to lithium-iron-phosphate. MIIT's filing omits capacity and range estimates, but the chemistry choice is meaningful: LFP packs cost less, tolerate heat better, and survive more charge cycles than nickel-manganese-cobalt cells. Chinese automakers have made LFP the default, and Ora's adoption is a clear cost signal.
MIIT disclosures are a standard step in China's vehicle-approval process, published in periodic batches. They reliably reveal motor output, dimensions, and battery type, but they don't tell the whole story. No range rating, no equipment list, no price. Expect a formal launch a few months after this filing, with the finer points filled in.
The Ballet Cat starts around ¥193,000 — roughly $28,000. That places it in a crowded segment, above BYD's Dolphin entry pricing and in the same conversation as Volkswagen's ID.3. Sales are modest, with only a few thousand units finding buyers each year. In Great Wall's portfolio, the Ballet Cat functions as a halo model, not a volume player.
The LFP switch could shift the financials. Cheaper cells lower production costs, and in a price war that has pushed entire Chinese EV segments toward aggressive discounts, even a quirky niche car needs an affordable sticker. A trimmed price on the refreshed model wouldn't be a surprise.
Ora isn't toning down the Ballet Cat's personality. The oversized illuminated vanity mirror stays on the passenger side, good for touch-ups between meetings. The selfie camera in the infotainment system still uploads photos to social media without ever touching a phone. And "Warm Man Mode" — a one-touch cabin heater with a name that reads like a dating-app icebreaker — remains on the button list. The Ballet Cat is a lot of things, but forgettable isn't one of them.
As tempting as it is to imagine the Ballet Cat in a US driveway, the numbers don't work. Chinese-built EVs face a 100% import tariff, and Great Wall hasn't begun the homologation, dealer, parts, and certification legwork needed to sell here. Even a determined gray-market importer would face freight, conversion, and compliance costs that could double the purchase price.
So the Ballet Cat remains a digital curiosity for American audiences. YouTube reviews, Instagram reels, the occasional import-salvage story — that's the extent of it. The same barrier applies to Ora's other retro models, which is a pity because this is one of the few Chinese EV lineups with honest-to-goodness personality.
The Ballet Cat isn't Ora's only backward glance. The Lightning Cat, a fastback with proportions borrowed from a certain Stuttgart sedan, sits alongside it in the lineup. The Punk Cat, an even bolder Beetle homage, has surfaced in concept and patent-filing form. Almost no other Chinese EV maker bothers with this kind of styling theater; most are chasing lower drag coefficients and bigger displays. Ora's willingness to be unusual explains why its cars keep showing up in comment sections.
Every Ballet Cat upgrade doubles as a reminder that Volkswagen still hasn't committed to an electric Beetle. The ID. lineup spans everything from compact hatches to vans and SUVs, but the Beetle-shaped hole remains. A production e-Beetle would be a halo car with a ready-made audience, yet VW's cost-cutting mood and platform reorganizations make such a project easy to defer. So far, there isn't even a firm tease.
Meanwhile, a Chinese brand with a fraction of VW's resources keeps steadily improving its Beetle-flavored EV. That counts for something, even if the sales volumes are tiny.
Knockoff? Yes, and also sort of wonderful. The 2026 Ballet Cat picks up a proper power bump, an LFP battery that trims costs, and more top speed than anyone realistically needs. It keeps the vanity mirror, the selfie camera, and the oddly named button. That consistency is a feature, not a bug.
Chinese shoppers who want a Beetle-shaped EV without waiting for a VW miracle now have a stronger reason to visit an Ora store. Americans? We'll keep watching the videos and wondering what might have been.
