Sono Motors energy independent vehicle impresses

Aug 02, 2017 Raghu Das

Sono Motors in Germany has officially launched its solar electric car Sion in Munich with first deliveries expected in 2019. Its 330 integrated solar cells produce enough electricity to provide 30 km of energy independence per day. If needed, plugging in adds 250 km thanks to its 30 kWh battery. Once Sono Motors receives 5,000 orders, production will start at an external manufacturer.

Dr Peter Harrop, Chairman of IDTechEx comments, "There has been criticism of Sono Motors for being a small start up with modest funding. Some have said that such a small enterprise can never afford even crash testing but vehicles like this can be homologated as heavy quadricycles in Europe and Micro EVs elsewhere, neither of which need crash testing. For over a decade, the car-like GWhiz from India was the best-selling electric "car" in the UK. With its low price and compactness, it was bought by a higher percentage of women than is true of today's mainstream electric cars so maybe Sono Motors can tap into this. We are delighted to have Sono Motors presenting at our Energy Independent Vehicle event in September. They will be alongside such companies as Toyota and an Italian company IFEVS which has developed low cost transportable manufacture of homologated pure electric cars that can be energy independent."

"Energy Independent Electric Vehicles" 27-28 September takes place at the Technical University of Delft Netherlands. This event is the first one exclusively on the subject and it will embrace the commercial opportunity and technology roadmap. It is staged by IDTechEx which has the only comprehensive reports and consultancy on EIVs and their technologies such as structural electronics, triboelectric and 6D motion energy harvesting and extreme lightweighting. There are six optional Masterclasses on all this on September 26 and 29 and a small exhibition and viewings.

Partnering the event is TU Delft which has supported more record-breaking solar racers on land and water than anywhere on Earth. It is also a leader in enabling technologies such as Airborne Wind Energy AWE (tethered kites and drones that will help make ships energy independent), lightweight ultra efficient power electronics, 3D printing and wave power using dielectric elastomer generators.