Sono Motors says to stop development of Sion solar car without extra money – Picture and sound – News

There’s nothing wrong with crowdfunding, but the previous round of investment they’ve made should have been enough to say it’s not going to work. You don’t reach your goal and instead of being honest and throwing in the towel you extend the deadline by a month. Because then the hole was not small. Apparently time flies because we wrote at the end of 2019. They had intended to raise 50 million, but had only raised 32.5 million by the deadline. The deadline was postponed and another €20 million was raised.

In 2021, however, the company was again on the verge of bankruptcy and then went public again in 2021, raising 135 million, after which the price substantially collapsed, from $25 at launch to $1.11 at the time of writing.

Meanwhile the company is growing, they are also working on diversification but now they are back to a point where there is no money to produce the car again.

Sono itself indicates that it has already invested 264 million euros, and is now asking for another 50 million, the same 50 million that should have been enough at the end of 2019 to get to production. What guarantees can that company still give? Don’t forget that these 50 million are needed for the pre-production of the car. Who’s to say that by the time you’re ready for production there will still be money for production? Because with the current state of affairs, I think: people just drag themselves from one milestone to another.

I can say that I have enough money for the production of pre-orders, but who dares to give guarantees about it? And who dares, given all those previous investment rounds, to suddenly pay the price for a complete car for a company that has apparently been underestimating costs for years.

I still think Zion is a very nice concept, but keeping procrastinating and launching new funding rounds doesn’t really inspire confidence.

Even the comparison with Tesla is not entirely valid. They initially worked mostly on private equity with the roadster. Public funding, due to pre-orders you didn’t get it until much later.