It is the temporary end of another German car startup: Sono Motors is insolvent. The Munich company announced this on Monday. Sono Motors applied for a protective shield procedure at the responsible district court in Munich, so it wants to reorganize itself in self-administration. Still, it may be particularly bad news, especially for thousands of people who are still awaiting reimbursement of their Sono car reservation funds.
The company raised money through crowdfunding to build an electric car that can also be charged using solar cells in the body. According to earlier information, Sono had received a good 44,000 pre-orders for the car called the Sion by the beginning of this year. This should come onto the market in 2024 at a price of 30,000 euros. Some customers had already advanced the full purchase price for the car, others only part of it. In total, it is about 44 million euros.
When a second crowdfunding campaign failed earlier this year, Sono Motors halted its solar car program. 250 employees were laid off. Instead, Sono wanted to limit itself to the business with solar cells for buses, refrigerated trailers or cars from other manufacturers.
All payers received a repayment plan according to which they should get their money back in several installments by 2025. A financier initially promised the money for the repayment, but due to the uncertainty on the capital market “this financing did not materialize,” the company said. After the bankruptcy application, it is more questionable than ever whether the former Sono supporters will ever get their down payments back. It’s an enormous amount of money. According to Mandatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission By March 22, Sono Motors had only repaid 1.7 of the approximately 44 million euros, with a further 800,000 euros in the backlog.
The contaminated sites from the Sion program are too high to deal with on your own, said restructuring expert Dirk Schoene from the Dentons law firm, who is accompanying the company in the process. The management was confident that the restructuring would succeed. “Detours are part of founding a company and we will continue to strive in the future to implement sustainable solutions with our partners and thus contribute to the decarbonization of the vehicle market,” said co-founder and managing director Jona Christians.
Shareholders are also among the losers. With the protective shield procedure, the parent company Sono Group, which is listed on the US technology exchange Nasdaq, loses access to its only operating subsidiary. The Sono Group therefore also filed for insolvency proceedings under self-administration. On the day of the IPO in November 2021, the company was valued at $2.6 billion, but for many months a Sono share had not even been worth one euro.