Sono Motors

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Sono Motors GmbH

logo
legal form Company with limited liability
founding January 2016
Seat Munich
Branch Automotive industry
Website sonomotors.com/de
As of May 31, 2020

The founders and the team in August 2017

The Sono Motors GmbH is a German company that is developing a electric vehicle operates, which both the power grid and into the body integrated solar cells can be loaded. The Sono Sion is scheduled to go into production in the second half of 2021.

history

Sono Motors was founded by Laurin Hahn, Navina Pernsteiner and Jona Christians in January 2016 in Karben, Hesse . A crowdfunding campaign on the Indiegogo Internet platform was used to finance the company .

Prototype of the white Sono Sion

In the founding year, it was possible to secure the financing of two functional prototypes . These were developed and built by Roding Automobile GmbH according to Sono's specifications and presented to the public in July 2017.

During presentation tours through various European countries, interested parties were able to get to know the special features of the car and the mobility concept and take short test drives with the functional prototypes.

In July 2018, an expansion of the management was announced. Thomas Hausch was appointed as COO and Isa Krupka as CCO. In October 2018, Sono Motors raised new equity and debt capital in a further financing round. The fourth quarter of 2019 was announced as the start of production of the vehicle.

In March 2019, the company finally presented the series design of the Sion and announced the series production of its vehicle on April 17, 2019. It will be produced from the second half of 2020 at NEVS at the Swedish site in Trollhättan. The former Saab production facility will be reactivated there. Over a period of eight years, 260,000 vehicles will roll off the assembly line there.

According to Sono Motors, the company had 10,000 advance reservations for the Sion across Europe in May 2019; in January 2020 there were around 13,000.

In the summer of 2019, the interior concept of the vehicle was presented, which, according to Sono Motors, should be characterized primarily by user-friendliness and intuitive operability.

On December 1, 2019, Sono Motors announced that they had not obtained the necessary funds through the usual funding channels. If the potential investors had accepted the terms, they would have had to give up their own principles and lose the rights to their patents to the investors. The Sono Sion would never have found its way onto public roads in this way. Therefore, the founders returned to the original form of funding, crowdfunding. Sono Motors wanted to raise € 50 million by December 30, 2019 through new reservations with down payments of at least € 500, topping up the down payment for orders that have already been made, donations and letters of intent to grant investment loans. By the deadline set, around € 32.5 million had been non-binding, after which the deadline was extended to January 20, 2020 and finally € 53.3 million in commitments were reached.

Sono Sion

The Sono Sion is the first vehicle to be developed by Sono Motors. It is an electric car that, in addition to charging via Type 2 / CCS, should also be able to charge using the solar modules integrated in the body . In this way, up to 34 kilometers of additional range should be generated every day. According to the WLTP standard, Sono Motors puts the range at 255 kilometers.

Mobility concept

With the Sion, Sono Motors wants to bring electromobility to the center of society and make it suitable for everyday use. The integrated solar cells should ensure that - depending on the distance traveled and the amount of sunshine - a large part of the energy required comes from purely renewable energies .

Bidirectional charging - the option of using the vehicle battery as a mobile power storage device - is intended to replace the conventionally operated power generator in various areas of application.

According to its own statements, however, the company does not see the future of mobility in the sale of cars. Co-founder Jona Christians stated in an interview with the online magazine Der Klimareporter :

“It cannot go on so that 100 million vehicles are produced every year, even if all of these should one day be electric cars. We don't see it as our job to sell as many vehicles as possible, but to offer a system that gets you from A to B with the most resource-efficient means of transport. "

Sono Motors names the protection of the environment as the top priority of the company. According to the company, the greatest challenge is to reduce the misuse of finite resources - such as crude oil - and to minimize CO 2 emissions with the help of climate-friendly and resource-saving mobility concepts.

In February 2018, Sono Motors announced that it wanted to offset all CO 2 emissions that result from the production of the Sion. According to the company, the Sion is therefore the first series-produced vehicle in the world to take this step.

For this purpose, all unavoidable emissions are recorded and accounted for, including those that are produced by the company itself. In the next step, these are to be neutralized by investing in certified climate protection projects that have a positive impact on climate change, such as supporting wind turbines in Nicaragua or promoting biogas plants in India. The aim is to reduce and compensate for greenhouse gas emissions and the particularly climate-damaging CO 2 .

Web links

Commons : Sono Motors  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Contact & Press - Sono Motors . In: Sono Motors . ( sonomotors.com [accessed July 2, 2018]).
  2. ↑ a b Solar car Sion - Sono Motors . In: Sono Motors . ( sonomotors.com [accessed March 12, 2019]).
  3. ^ Corinna Visser: Laurin Hahn from Sono Motors: "We want electromobility for everyone". In: berlinvalley.com. September 10, 2017, accessed July 2, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Laurin Hahn: Sion. A solar car for everyone. In: Indiegogo . Retrieved July 2, 2018 .
  5. ^ Roding Automobile GmbH: Sion (/ references). Retrieved October 30, 2019 .
  6. ↑ SONO MOTORS: Release Event Solar Car Sion | Unveiling | Sono Motors. July 30, 2017, accessed July 2, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Test drives in the Sion by Sono Motors (videos) - electrive.com . In: electrive.net . August 28, 2017 ( electrive.net [accessed July 2, 2018]).
  8. ↑ Sono Motors announces 7000 reservations and new test drive tour. In: ecomento.de. August 16, 2018, accessed January 22, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Sono Motors expands management team with experienced management experts, automotive expert Thomas Hausch appointed as COO and marketing expert Isa Krupka appointed as CCO . In: presseportal.de . July 5, 2018 ( presseportal.de [accessed July 19, 2018]).
  10. ↑ Sebastian Schaal: Sono Motors starts another financing round. In: Edison Media. October 18, 2018, accessed November 28, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Press release: Manufacturing of the first serially produced SEV in the former SAAB factory in Trollhättan. Sono Motors, April 17, 2019, accessed November 28, 2019 .
  12. ↑ a b Sono Motors concludes community funding campaign with 53,342,998 euros. In: ecomento.de. January 21, 2020, accessed January 22, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Thomas Morgenstern: Electric car start-up. Last chance for Sono Motors. In: Stuttgarter Zeitung . January 3, 2020, accessed January 11, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Konstantin Berger: Startup wanted to stir up the market with solar cell e-cars - and is now fighting for survival. In: Business Insider . December 2, 2019, accessed January 15, 2020 .
  15. ↑ “Selling a lot of cars is not our goal” . In: Klimareporter . June 18, 2018 ( klimareporter.de [accessed July 2, 2018]).
  16. ↑ About us - Sono Motors . In: Sono Motors . ( sonomotors.com [accessed July 2, 2018]).
  17. ↑ Sono Motors presents the first fully CO2-compensated electric car in Berlin. In: wallstreet: online . February 23, 2018, accessed January 16, 2020 .