Sunset in front of solar car
The floundering Sono Motors has not been able to get the finances on track. The German company behind solar car Sion is forced to pull the plug on the Sion project. However, the company itself will continue to exist.
Solar cars are having a hard time. Part of the Dutch Lightyear went bankrupt, with the result that the production of the Lightyear 0 solar car was stopped after just a handful of copies. Lightyear is making a new start and hopes to be able to produce its next solar car – the larger-scale and cheaper Lightyear 2. The German Sono Motors is another party that has been developing an electric car for years that generates part of its required energy with solar cells: the Sion. In mid-January, it turned out that Sono Motors was chasing a financial raft of €105 million to stay afloat. That amount was not collected in time, but Sono Motors gave itself a little longer. After more than a month of struggling, Sono Motors throws in the towel.
It’s over and out for solar car Sion. Sono Group has raised 90 percent of the money needed and that is not enough. It’s pulling the plug on the Sion project, and that means the car it’s been developing since at least the company’s inception in 2016 will never go into production. The closing of the Zion book will result in, among other things, the loss of jobs of some 300 employees. However, Sono Group will not disappear. Since 2021, Sono has been supplying its solar cell technology to manufacturers of buses and trucks such as MAN, Mitsubishi and Scania, among others. It will continue to do so, according to its own words, in Europe and Asia as well as in the United States.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl