Sono Motors starts funding campaign for the Sion

In Germany, in a statement on the sidelines of the Q3 figures, the CEOs and co-founders of Sono Motors, Jona Christians and Laurin Hahn, announced a special reservation campaign for the Sion. If this is not successful, the solar electric car may never be made, but this also no longer spells the end of the company.

++ This article has been updated. Kindly continue reading below. ++

After numerous changes to the plan, the series production of the Sion at Valmet Automotive in Finland was supposed to start in the second half of 2023. But this is now on the back burner again – apparently for financial reasons. In the “#saveSion” reservation campaign, the company wants to receive reservations for 3,500 vehicles within 50 days. If this number is reached, a deposit of 3,000 euros per reservation will be due – making a total of 10.5 million euros.

With this campaign, Jona Christians and Laurin Hahn want to let the community decide on the future of the Sion electric car, which is otherwise threatened with extinction. Many investors have, therefore, already advised the company to focus on the less capital-intensive B2B solar business. For example, with the Solar Bus Kit unveiled in the summer, or even the order “from one of the largest OEMs in the world” that the company received, according to the Q3 report – to integrate solar cells into the bodywork of the unnamed OEM’s vehicles. In favour of the B2B solar business, which is already generating revenue, investors advised the young company to abandon the Sion programme. “We understand the market situation and would be willing to restructure our business model in the interest of the company’s long-term success,” Christians and Hahn said in their statement. “However, before we dare to discontinue the Sion development, we want to give our community of over 21,000 Sion reserves one last chance to keep the Sion programme alive and partially close our funding gap.”

The founders of the German electric solar car startup emphasise the now high number of reservations for the Sion electric car, which now includes 21,000 reservations from private individuals and 22,000 pre-orders from fleet operators – Finn alone reserved over 12,000 units in the summer. If binding orders were to be placed, this would correspond to a sales potential of more than one billion euros.

“#saveSion is our solution for financing a large part of the Sion programme without further diluting the share,” the statement reads. “If we are unable to successfully complete the campaign, we plan to focus on our attractive B2B solar business, which is significantly less capital intensive. We think that thanks to our current and expected liquidity of around 55 million euros, as well as other available resources, we would be able to successfully refocus the company purely on the solar business. So this time it’s not about the future of Sono Motors, but ‘only’ about the future of the Sion.”

This is not the first time the company has launched a crowdfunding campaign. At the end of 2019, the short-term funding requirement was 50 million euros, which was then also raised within 50 days. At that time, in the early development phase, this secured the company’s continued existence.

Update 18 January 2023

Sono Motors has provided an update on the status of the campaign to save the Sion solar electric car. More than 8,000 people have already supported the ongoing campaign – either by making a new reservation for a Sion or by increasing their deposit. As of today, the more than 44,000 reservations for the Sion are made up of approx. 21,000 paid B2C reservations, approx. 22,000 non-binding B2B pre-orders and more than 1,000 new reservations from private individuals that were made together with a down payment commitment via the campaign. In this way, the company is currently recording new payment commitments of more than 40 million euros from its community.

These funds will be used to close the funding gap until the pre-series. Given this strong backing, it is “conceivable” that Sono Motors will reach its goal of raising around €100 million in the coming weeks through new or increased reservation deposits, investments and other financial support.

sonomotors.com, sonomotors.com, sonomotos.com (update)