![]() People can buy a car outright, or put down any amount from €500 to the full price of a Sion, which is currently set at an incredibly affordable €29,900. According to Christians, the company has raised about half its ambitious funding target and extended the campaign to the end of February. Sono Motors began 50 days of crowdfunding in December. Raising money takes much longer than expected, since we failed to explain to investors why the Sion has the potential to become the world's first affordable solar-electric vehicle and that there is a huge demand for it.” As a result, financing our Sion program through equity has become increasingly challenging and dilutive. “Financial markets have experienced a negative downturn, with many tech companies losing up to 90+% of their respective market cap, and shares in mobility tech companies have been hit particularly hard. Sono Motors announced during its Q3 2022 earnings call that: ![]() ![]() ÖPNV-Service Hagen has signed on to provide fast installation and maintenance of the solar bus kits, at a rate of around 4500 annually, with the capacity to scale throughout Europe and, with time, extend to other markets.īut despite the success of commercial offerings, there just isn't enough money to manufacture the Sion. Refrigerator truck company CHEREAU has also committed to purchasing solar technology for its fleet with the potential to reduce local CO2 emissions by approximately nine tonnes per year per vehicle compared to trailers with diesel-powered cooling units. Customers and partners include, Rhenus, Chereau, Scania (a subsidiary of Volkswagen), Mitsubishi Europe, and MVG, a German public transport authority. The Kit can save up to 1,500 litres of diesel and up to 4 tonnes of CO2 per bus per year from the ~1.4 kW peak installation with a total size of about 8 square metres of solar panels.īus fleet operators stand to see a potential payback time of approximately three-four years, depending on days in operation and fuel prices.Īnd there's strong B2B interest. It allows subsystems like the HVAC to be partially powered by renewable energy. In July 2022, the company launched the ' Solar Bus Kit '. Car-hire company FINN signed up to reserve and purchase 12,600 vehicles to create a sustainable fleet. In 2022 it looked like things were going ok. While investments in renewable energy should be the logical way of the future, Hahn suggests that the financial challenges of late caused "investors to prioritise other asset classes, resulting in a funding gap for some startups in a growth-phase pre-revenue in climate tech.”Īnd despite raising about $350 million since 2016, Sono Motors needs more money to put Sion in production next year as planned. Russia's evasion of Ukraine and rising energy prices causes further challenges. The reasons are unsurprising – recession, the COVID-10 pandemic, inflation and interest rate rises, and an industry still reeling from supplier shortages and delays. It shifted its core manufacturing focus to the US, dropping current plans for multiple vehicles to focus on the electric van already planned for US fleets.Īnd closer to Germany, Poland's autocycle brand Triggo has halted commercial operations. In the commercial space, EV makers Arrival cut staffing by 50%. Three days later, its parent company Atlas Technologies BV announced bankruptcy. Earlier this year, Lightyear – arguably Sono Motors closest rival – announced the suspension of the costly Lightyear 0 solarEV to focus on the €40k Lightyear 2. ![]() The last couple of years has been challenging for young automotive OEMs, particularly scaleups. I spoke to co-founders and co-CEOs Laurin Hahn and Jona Christians to learn about it. Who the fuck would share its financial pains on YouTube? Well, Sono Motors. Most financial troubleshooting happens behind doors, and we only really hear about them if a company is acquired or folks announce redundancies on LinkedIn.īut if there's one thing Sono Motors is known for, it's transparency and radical honesty. It's not every day that a company admits its financial struggles and reaches out for help – it's not very "fake it till you make it". Sono Motors has less than two weeks to get 1800 new pre-orders (or a nice chunk of investment). When a company starts a fundraising campaign for a yet-to-be-released solar electric vehicle (SEV) Sion with the hashtag #savesion, you know things aren't going that great. ![]()
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