ROME – The project dissolved even before the sun rose. At dawn on February 28, the deadline of a fundraising campaign that obviously went wrong, Sono Group canceled the Sono Sion project, the electric car covered on the roof and sides with solar cells to increase autonomy at no cost . “Despite more than 45,000 bookings and pre-orders from Sion, we were forced to react to the instability of the financial markets and optimize our business,” CEO and co-founder Laurin Hahn wrote in a statement.
Farewell to the solar car or at least to this experiment, for which the German group from Munich had communicated the start of production this year in Finland together with Valmet, first deliveries to customers (21,000 of whom private, according to Hahn) at beginning of 2024, indicative price (and astounding, now we understand better why) around 25 thousand euros. With the project dissolved in the sun, 300 jobs will also be eliminated, the statement reads, while the group will henceforth focus only on the development of solar technology and to supply cells to a series of customers including Man and Scania of Volkswagen, plus Mitsubishi.
Operation sun, a Tesla traveling with solar panels
On the site stands out the words “The Futur is Solar”, photos of buses and trucks and a message of “apologies” to the “Dear Community”. For many it may not be easy to accept them, including the European Commission in Brussels which in February granted the group a loan of 1.46 million euros through the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (China), 532,000 of which for Sion . All ended up in the fundraising campaign launched in December, #savesion, with the aim of finding 100 million euros after the group’s listing on the Nasdaq last November.
Operation sun, a Tesla traveling with solar panels
Argument on which Hahn, only on February 10th, had somehow leveraged by telling us how serious the project was: “Since we listed on the Nasdaq – he had replied to one of our questions – various manufacturers are taking us into consideration more and more seriously. We believe that solar plays an important role. Above all because it can make us independent of charging infrastructure”. Goodbye Zion, goodbye independence. Which remains a much more serious thing.