There is something deliberately pointed about choosing a disused petrol station as the venue for an electric vehicle demonstration. GWM Australia is doing exactly that, converting a forgotten Collingwood forecourt into the ORA Fun Station, a one-day pop-up running from 11am to 3pm on Sunday, 2 August 2026, at Little Sam’s Service Station on Wellington Street.
The Venue Makes the Point
The site will be dressed in a Euro summer aesthetic, striped umbrellas, terracotta tones, Italian street food, and a live DJ playing Euro-house and disco. GWM wall chargers will stand alongside the existing fuel bowsers, which is a neat visual shorthand for where the industry is heading.
Entry is free, and so is everything on offer: barista coffee, fresh focaccia paninis, a live caricaturist, pétanque, and Polaroid photos. The activation is built around GWM’s current Live a Little MORA brand campaign, which plays on the ORA name to suggest EVs offer more than simple point-to-point transport.
Three ORA 5s Power the Whole Thing
The more substantive claim here is the power source. Three GWM ORA 5 SUVs will supply all electricity for the event using Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) technology, running the espresso machine, food truck, DJ booth, speakers, and lighting without a petrol generator in sight.
V2L allows compatible EVs to export power from their battery pack to external devices and appliances. It is a genuinely useful feature, though one that many buyers remain unaware of. GWM’s head of marketing, Steve Maciver, acknowledged as much, describing V2L as “one of the most overlooked features of an electric vehicle.”
Using three vehicles to power a modest outdoor event is a reasonable demonstration of the technology’s practical ceiling, it is not a stress test, but it is a legible, public proof of concept that most people can relate to.
Repositioning Around Real-World Use
The activation sits within a broader effort by GWM to move its EV messaging away from specification sheets and towards everyday scenarios. Showing a car power a coffee machine or a speaker stack is more immediately convincing to a general audience than quoting kilowatt-hour figures.
Whether a single Sunday afternoon event shifts meaningful numbers of buyers is another question. But as a way of putting V2L capability in front of people who might never have considered it, a free coffee and a game of pétanque is a reasonable opening offer.
- When: Sunday, 2 August 2026, 11:00am – 3:00pm
- Where: Little Sam’s Service Station, 302–310 Wellington Street, Collingwood VIC 3066
- Cost: Free public entry, including food, coffee, and entertainment
The ORA Fun Station is a small event with a clear argument behind it. In a market still warming to EVs, demonstrating what the battery can do beyond driving (in a setting as familiar as a servo) is a more grounded pitch than most marketing activations manage.
