Sono Motors Terminates the Sion car Program, to Focus Exclusively on Solar Tech

Germany's Sono Motors has decided to pivot its business model to exclusively retrofitting and integrating its solar technology onto third party vehicles, and to terminate its Sion passenger car program. The move reflects a decision to focus on a capital-light business model – an estimated 90% of the funding needs for 2023 were generated by the Sion program – in light of depressed capital market conditions.

Given the resource-intensive nature of the Sion program, including personnel requirements, the Munich-based company is now implementing a significant cost reduction program. This means the redundancy of approximately 300 employees.

Sono Motors says it intends to sell its Sion program.

The company’s solar solutions, including hardware such as power electronics and software, are already in application, with 23 B2B customers across Europe, Asia, and the US piloting Sono Motors’ integrated solar technology on a variety of vehicles, including third-party OEM cars, buses, refrigerated vehicles, and recreational vehicles.

Going forward, Sono Motors intends to focus specifically on buses and third-party OEM cars.

It will now scale up its technology, starting with the introduction of the next generation of its mass-market-ready retrofit solution for cleaner public transportation — the ‘Solar Bus Kit’ — planned for the second quarter of 2023.

Talks with potential investors will now exclusively focus on solar technology.

Laurin Hahn, co-founder and CEO of Sono Motors, says: “This pivot marks a significant step in Sono Motors’ business development. Even though we had to terminate our original passion project, the Sion program, shifting our entire focus to business-to-business solar solutions provides us with an opportunity to continue to create innovative products in the solar space. It was a difficult decision and despite more than 45,000 reservations and pre-orders for the Sion, we were compelled to react to the ongoing financial market instability and streamline our business.“

Sono Motors’ solar technology has been engineered to be seamlessly integrated into a variety of vehicle architectures — including third-party OEM cars, buses, refrigerated vehicles, and recreational vehicles — to extend range and reduce fuel costs as well as the impact of CO2 emissions, paving the way for climate-friendly mobility.