The Munich start-up Sono has been trying to build its own electric car for years. The car should not only be comparatively cheap and still offer families enough space – and be sustainable like hardly any other car: instead of layers of paint, solar panels are attached to the sheet metal. A car that can also charge itself from the sun, for an average range of 112 kilometers per week. But contrary to what was repeatedly announced, the solar car cannot be bought to this day. And according to a statement from the company bosses, it could even be that the Sion never gets on the road. Because the start-up threatens to run out of money again.
Sono hired on Thursday video on youtube, 6:20 minutes long. Right at the beginning, co-founder Laurin Hahn told the visibly shocked Sono employees in English: “We didn’t manage to raise any money. Maybe we have to end the Sion project and just continue with Solar.” A few seconds break. Then: “That’s hard.” The last chance is now that 3,500 customers pay a reduced purchase price of 27,000 euros for their car in full in advance – otherwise the project would have failed. The company has set a deadline of 50 days until the end of January for the rescue attempt.
All this is reminiscent of a campaign exactly three years ago. Even then, the company was threatened with running out of money because the founders could not come to an agreement with potential investors. Even then, many advised the start-up to just sell the solar technology and abandon the very expensive, very complicated project of producing their own car. At that time, the Sono bosses started a large crowdfunding campaign and actually averted bankruptcy. Also because thousands of people paid in advance and fully advanced the price of the car – which was supposed to be 25,000 euros at the time. Around 21,000 private customers have already reserved a Sion and paid an average of 2,000 euros in advance. According to Sono, there are pre-orders from fleet operators for a further 22,000 solar cars.
But another three years went by without a single production Sion rolling off the assembly line at a former Saab factory in Sweden. Instead, there were always financial difficulties. Hahn and Christians had the company listed on the US stock exchange a year ago to avert imminent insolvency. The main shareholders are the two founders and US investors. “Many investors are advising us that we should focus on our less capital-intensive B2B solar business, which is already generating sales, and abandon the Sion program,” Hahn and Christians said. Sono Motors now also builds solar solutions for buses and trucks. The potential buyers of the solar car would now have one last chance “to keep the Sion program alive and to partially close our financing gap”. Otherwise, “we plan to focus on our attractive B2B solar business, which is significantly less capital intensive.”
As the company has now announced, Sono Motors made a loss of 104 million euros this year by the end of September and needs fresh money to be able to build the pre-series in 2023 and the first series car in early 2024.