This Solar EV Was Touted As A Revolution. It’s Now Being Sold For Under $1,000

• German startup Sono Motors promised a solar EV that could get over 150 miles of free driving range from the sun every day.
• The upstart went bust in 2023, and its assets are now up for grabs.
• Several prototypes and components are being auctioned off, and the starting prices are ridiculously low.

Solar EVs have yet to become mainstream, with a lot of the companies that tried to build something suitable for daily use eventually going under. Sono Motors is one of those companies, but now you can own a piece of the promising German startup that failed to build a mass-market solar-powered family car.

The company killed its solar electric car project back in 2023, saying it would “focus on a capital-light business model in light of depressed capital market conditions.” In other words, it sunk a lot of money into the project, and the times ahead were quite turbulent.

So, here we are now, two years later, with all of the company’s prototypes and a multitude of components up for auction on an Austrian website, as first spotted by Electrive. There are a dozen brand-new electric motors, each with a starting price of just €50, which is roughly $58 at the current exchange rate. Front seats go for €14 ($16) each, a rear bench seat starts from €30 ($35), and a bare body without panels starts from €100 ($116).

There’s a huge assortment of parts up for sale, including suspension bits, interior trim and, of course, solar panels. But the big items here are the fully built prototypes. Sadly, there’s not much information on these, but you can choose from a weird Renault Twingo-based mule with first-gen Mercedes-Benz A-Class headlights, which starts from €600 ($699), and several later prototypes. One of the cars, which has a working infotainment system and a camouflage wrap, had a starting price of €600 ($699), but the latest bid was at  €750 ($874) when this article went live.

Sono Motors solar EV auction photos

Photo by: Aurena.at

There’s also one mangled green prototype that was used for crash testing up for grabs, if a broken solar EV is what you’re after.

It’s worth noting that none of the prototypes are road-legal. There’s also no paperwork, so good luck getting one registered for public road use. That said, some of the components, like the motors and batteries, could be used for other projects, although it will likely be a pain to get them to work without having any documentation at hand.

Sono Motors unveiled its first solar electric car prototype in 2017. The first iteration was supposed to reach customers in 2019, but that never happened. It had a total of 330 solar cells that would be capable of producing around 18 miles of range from the sun, in addition to the roughly 100 miles of range offered by the built-in 30 kilowatt-hour battery.

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Source: Aurena.at

It all started as an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign that raised over $700,000 from more than 1,100 pre-orders. Initially, two models were supposed to be offered, but the entry-level version, which was designed to offer just 50 to 60 miles of range, was dropped from the get-go. Then, the cabin was redesigned to have just five seats instead of six to keep production costs down.

Things slowly progressed, and in 2022, the last prototype of the Sion solar EV embarked on a three-week tour of the United States to show off its capabilities. The design was tweaked, but the starting price was kept low: just $25,000. However, the production date was once again moved to the second half of 2023, with Finland’s Valmet Automotive, the same company that built the original Fisker Karma, chosen as the contract manufacturer.

The upgraded Sion EV had 456 solar half-cells integrated into the car’s body, which could theoretically offer between 70 and 150 miles of free range just by sitting in the sun. The car’s battery was also upgraded to a bigger 54-kWh lithium iron phosphate (LFP) pack that could itself deliver up to 190 miles of range. Charging could be done at up to 75 kW from a DC fast charger and at up to 11 kW from an AC source.

By the end of 2022, Sono Motors had racked up an impressive 45,000 paid reservations for the Sion EV, but in early 2023, the company decided to kill the project and focus on selling solar panels to other businesses.