After loud fanfare and promising promises, to put it mildly, various solar car projects are gradually starting to face the first difficulties. Lightyear, which can already be considered the “leader” of the industry, recently announced the so-called temporary cessation of production of its large sedan Lightyear 0 to focus on the development of Lightyear 2, another solar sedan, but eight times cheaper than the 0.

But other projects were not so lucky. Indeed, we have learned that the Sono Motors Sion, an electric car that is capable of charging with energy from the sun and was supposed to be on the roads of Europe from 2024, will never see the light of day.

Sono Motors commits to focus exclusively on solar business for B2B customers and has discontinued the Sion Passenger Car program

—SonoMotors (@SonoMotors) February 24, 2023

Solar car: a usurped term?

“Sono Motors aims to focus exclusively on solar business for B2B customers and has discontinued the Sion passenger car program,” Sono Motors planned to create a fleet of family cars with a black body covered in 456 photovoltaic cells to provide additional autonomy.

In general, the term “solar car” is a bit usurped in that sense the car works not only on the energy of the sun. Rather, it is an electric car equipped with photovoltaic panels capable of supplying energy to the battery to drive the car.

The stored solar energy is pretty negligible, although in Lightyear’s case, its 0 sedan can travel up to 70 km per day only thanks to the energy of the sun. But the sunlight conditions should still be good.

Sono Motors intends to refund its customers

On the Sono Motors side, the range was 305 km for each car thanks to the electric battery, with an additional range of 112 km per week on average thanks to solar power.

Unfortunately, this very ambitious project did not necessarily attract investors. Therefore, the manufacturer will focus exclusively on integrating its solar technology into third-party vehicles. Its clients include Mitsubishi Europe, Chéreau and two subsidiaries of Volkswagen.

“This was a difficult decision and despite over 45,000 bookings and pre-orders for Sion, we were forced to respond to the ongoing volatility in the financial markets and streamline our operations.” said Lorin Hahn, CEO of Sono Motors.

Remember that half of the customers who booked the Sion model paid the average deposit is 2,225 euros. This deposit was to finance the development of the model. Will customers get their deposit back? Sono Motors assures that yes, but under certain conditions. To compensate them, the manufacturer announced a refund in “multiple payments”, and a “bonuses” gifted “within the next two years.”