The program will be discontinued with immediate effect and around 300 employees will be laid off.
(Photo: dpa)
Dusseldorf Tough times in Munich: Sono Motors discontinues its flagship project, the Sion. In the future, the company will focus exclusively on the solar business with business customers. With 300 employees, around three quarters of the workforce will be made redundant. The manager responsible for the operational business, Thomas Hausch, is resigning from his job.
CEO and co-founder Laurin Hahn speaks of the end of a “heart project” and justifies the decision with the “persistent instability of the financial markets”. The company’s shares fell by around 25 percent when the stock market opened.
At the end of January, Sono was still confident of finding investors for the Sion program. A campaign by word of mouth and test drives in various cities in Germany, Switzerland and Austria should save the solar car. Anyone who ordered a solar car received a ten percent discount on the purchase price of around 30,000 euros. “I’m confident that we’ll achieve the goal of the campaign,” Hahn told Handelsblatt a few weeks ago.
>>Read here: Customers should save electric car Sion
In order to be able to build the Sion in pre-series, Sono Motors had to collect 104 million euros. However, commitments were only received for around half of the sum. Almost 9,000 customers have probably taken part since the campaign began in December 2022.
The reactions on Twitter varied between disappointment, sympathy and concern for the money paid in. “Unfortunately, you took too long and wasted money – what about the down payments?” asks a user, for example.
The money is to be paid back in installments
Sono will not collect the down payment promises made during the campaign, according to the press release. However, customers who have paid a deposit in previous years will have to wait for their money. The down payment will be repaid in several installments “plus a bonus over the next two years”, according to the statement. The first 30 percent of the sum would be transferred in May 2023, 40 percent “by no later than” June 2024 and the rest by January 2025.
According to Sono’s latest quarterly report, around 21,000 customers are affected, each of whom has transferred an average of 2,000 euros. That’s a total of more than 42 million euros. According to the financial report, Sono had cash of 33.4 million euros at the end of September 2022.
Actually, the cars should be produced from 2024 and come on the market at a unit price of around 30,000 euros. The compact electric car should be able to drive an average of 112 kilometers per week with solar cells on the body and have a range of a good 300 kilometers with additional power from the socket and a battery.
Sono now wants to focus on the business with solar cells for buses, refrigerated trailers or cars from other manufacturers. Discussions with potential investors focused exclusively on this from then on.
The Munich-based company works with Mitsubishi Europe and the two Volkswagen subsidiaries Scania and MAN on their solar roofs for buses.
With agency material.
More: Customers should save electric car Sion