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Sono Scraps Solar Car and Dismisses Almost Three-Quarters of Staff

37 points by marban 4y ago

keltex 4y ago
https://archive.is/0XFsl https://archive.is/0XFsl
danans 4y ago
Sad to hear, but ultra-efficient solar-charging EVs are the next step in EV evolution, and companies like Sono have demonstrated that there's no physical limitation on making a practical solar powered vehicle. I'm rooting for Lightyear or Aptera to make it through their current funding issues.
- lnsru 4y ago
  Is it really practical? My car is in a garage when I am at home. My car is in a garage when I am in the office. Street parking in the city isn’t practical either. The buildings hide the sun. Plus the car gets dirty much quicker than stationary solar panels installation. I would say, the advantage of such vehicle is rather limited.
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    Yeah, if the panels are so efficient that 8 hrs of sitting can charge 2 hrs of driving, then just put those panels on your roof and wire them into a garage charger.
    - Robotbeat 4y ago
      The advantage is the convenience of not even needing to plug in at all. Quit thinking of solar cells as an expensive, limited commodity. They’re cheap. Cheaper literally than glass. About 10¢ per Watt at the cell level.
      - coryrc 4y ago
        But you still have to plug in. Solar panels on a car will not make enough energy to run the vast majority of cars even if parked always in the sun. And for the few it could, you're using it so little what's the point of even having it?
        Robotbeat 4y ago
        8 hours in the Sun is good enough for 2 hours of driving, according to that blurb. That’s like 100 miles of range added per day, and the battery can buffer multiple days. Who drives 700 miles per week? Maybe 10%? Aptera’s car charges 40 miles per day, which is the same as the average American’s round trip commute (and can buffer during the weekend as well). The overall end point for solar charging is you’re charging enough that you don’t have to plug in unless you’re going on a road trip. I don’t know why it is hard to understand the basic idea or value of this. Most working people commute by car, and this concept would potentially allow all of the commuting miles by most people to be handled by the Sun. Home charging just no longer required. For sunny parts of the world (where people don’t park in garages, where they could plug in), that’s pretty awesome.
        coryrc 4y ago
        > 8 hours in the Sun is good enough for 2 hours of driving, according to that blurb. That’s like 100 miles of range... Nope! They might want you to think that with misleading wording, but you'd be lucky for 2 hours of driving at 12 mph. And, again, that's only if the car gets full sun the entire day. At those distances, just get an electric bicycle. EDIT: I don't know what blurb you refer to, but my search engine says https://sonomotors.com/en/sion/ https://sonomotors.com/en/sion/ used to say "on average 112km/week".
        Robotbeat 4y ago
        It was jvanderbot’s quip: “Yeah, if the panels are so efficient that 8 hrs of sitting can charge 2 hrs of driving, then just put those panels on your roof and wire them into a garage charger.” Generally, it helps to take comments in context… In his hypothetical, that’s clearly more than enough for the average person’s commute. And even if it isn’t quite enough, it could reduce the frequency you need to make trips to a fast charging station (effectively like having a twice as large of a battery), if you cannot charge at home. Charging stations usually are substantially more expensive than residential, maybe 3-4 times the price, and residential is 4 times the price of utility scale solar power (due to buffering and distribution, etc). So there’s a good financial case for it if you can get the cost low, plus you have the added convenience. Sono’s solar wasn’t very good. Lightyear and Aptera’s ability to add up to 40 miles per day is pretty useful… if they can get the cost down.
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      Less than 50% of Americans own a garage or carport. So even if you're right, it's not a useful answer for half of Americans.
- nradov 4y ago
  There is a physical limitation on making a practical solar powered vehicle. Even if the vehicle is parked outside and uses high efficiency panels it won't get much of a charge. Just a stupid idea from the start, bordering on being a fraud.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    Yeah, I don’t see how people with even a mild understanding of energy and electricity can fall for a car powered solely by solar panels on its exterior. It’s utter snake oil if you look at the energy output of solar panels over time and the energy required to move a car just 1 km with no extra load (no driver).
lnsru 4y ago
They missed the market very badly. Back then the car was somehow innovative. But now is just a poor electric copy of Nissan Leaf/Honda jazz. Plus market is full of Chinese vehicles like MG4, funky cat and dozen others in the same price range. So timing is clearly crucial for a venture to fail or succeed.
HPsquared 4y ago
It's inefficient enough (in terms of costs) to put lots of little solar panels on peoples' roofs, even more so to put even smaller ones on top of cars which are probably parked in the shade half the time. Where's the synergy? Surely it's much more efficient for solar panels to be placed in a solar farm in a sunny location where thousands of panels are procured, built and maintained together utilising economies of scale.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  Hell it's probably more efficient to have a solar field in sunny Texas / CA, then ship the energy in battery packs or hydrogen cells to a car in Minnesota.
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    It is not. Particularly the latter.
    - jvanderbot 4y ago
      You're right, of course, but I was facetiously comparing vs. a few solar panels in a garage.
- timerol 4y ago
  Solar panels are dirt cheap, so throwing them approximately everywhere makes good sense. We're not really limited in the number of panels we can produce right now. Rooftop solar is mostly expensive because installed costs are 10x the raw costs (around $3/W total compared to $0.30/W of panels). Installing them in a factory removes that bespoke assembly step. Everything that is manufactured, sits outside, and uses electricity might as well have solar attached
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    Panels are cheap, but integrating them into something like a car takes time and effort, and hardware to support charging from solar, all of which costs money. It's even more money if you want to design a car that can obtain any measurable amount of range from solar.
tromp 4y ago
Solar car fans can still pin their hopes on Aptera [1] and on Lightyear which is rising again from bankruptcy [2], though both their futures still look rather shaky... Personally, I think ditching the solar and just focussing on low weight and affordability like luvly [3] does, makes more sense, but obviously those are limited to shorter ranges. [1] https://electrek.co/2023/02/10/aptera-has-raised-3m-of-its-20-50m-crowdfund-goal-offers-new-swag-to-investors/ https://electrek.co/2023/02/10/aptera-has-raised-3m-of-its-2... [2] https://cleantechnica.com/2023/02/22/lightyear-is-launching-back-out-of-bankruptcy/ https://cleantechnica.com/2023/02/22/lightyear-is-launching-... [3] https://www.wallpaper.com/transportation/luvly-o-ev-from-new-swedish-mobility-brand-hoping-to-reinvent-city-car https://www.wallpaper.com/transportation/luvly-o-ev-from-new...
- ianai 4y ago
  I really hope aptera succeeds. I personally would buy one, but I live and work where I’m surrounded at all times by most of the largest mass production vehicles. I’d never ride a motorcycle around here and feel safe. Solar wise though this is prime territory.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    It might not do well in a collision with an F350, but an Aptera is considerably larger than it looks in pictures. It's wider and higher than a Tesla Model S. It'll fit a surfboard in the trunk, or a bicycle without any disassembly.
  - antisthenes 4y ago
    I really hope so too, but from my perspective, Aptera has been in perpetual vaporware since at least 2006. Yes, they evolved into something different now with the advent of EVs, but they still no product to show for all their efforts. And now that 90% of manufacturers have their own EV, I'm not sure Aptera's use case even exists anymore outside of an extremely narrow market niche.
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  I hope Altera makes it to production. Solar aside, it's probably the most efficient EV based on weight and drag coefficient. You can plug it into 110V and get plenty of range for commuting, much less strain on the power grid, less battery materials needed.
pg_bot 4y ago
If you do the math, solar powered cars are not going to work. You just don't have the available surface area on a car to provide enough power to charge it in a reasonable timeframe. Plus solar panels add weight and manufacturing complexity. If you're building an electric car you would be better off spending your time trying to make the car more aerodynamic or weigh less. The only way I could see it working in a production vehicle is with an rv that can have its panels fold out while stationary. Any investor worth their salt could do 10 minutes of math and figure out that this is a terrible idea.
- ant6n 4y ago
  It doesn’t fill the whole tank, but on many days it can add 10-20km of range. Given that commute distances in cities (Europe) can be small, and given that in cities most won’t have their own garage to charge, this means you could get away with charging your car once week instead of twice. In general I’d agree that this solar car thing doesn’t make sense, but Sono did make a compelling case and the whole package kind of made sense. But their execution and timing was off.
  - pg_bot 4y ago
    I don't think it's a timing or execution thing. You can have the best engineers and operations on the planet and it still wouldn't work. The benefits of the solar car are just not big enough when compared to a standard electric car.
    - ant6n 4y ago
      Sono had thousands of pre orders, made millions with them. The overall package made sense to those people. And Sono didn’t lie on numbers. You need to spend more than 2 seconds on the target market before making snap judgements. The problem is that in 5 years they didn’t make it to production. And they needed a bunch of money now, just at end of the EV bubble. They also did an IPO way too early, and in the IPO didn’t raise enough to get to production. These are all timing and execution mistakes, not market match/product issues.
snickerer 4y ago
I could buy some electric car and stick solar cells all over the roof. Plus some wiring and a charge controller. That would be about a day's work. If one day I need a car that can, say, play music for days at a festival in the summer, I'll do that. Of course, to improve the range of the car with it, it wouldn't be worth it. The expense of a whole working day would be far too expensive for that. I think solar cars are a scam. The victims are these investors with a good heart (save the planet!) but no clue at all about engineering or science.

37 points by marban 4y ago

https://archive.is/0XFsl https://archive.is/0XFsl

Sad to hear, but ultra-efficient solar-charging EVs are the next step in EV evolution, and companies like Sono have demonstrated that there's no physical limitation on making a practical solar powered vehicle. I'm rooting for Lightyear or Aptera to make it through their current funding issues.

lnsru 4y ago
Is it really practical? My car is in a garage when I am at home. My car is in a garage when I am in the office. Street parking in the city isn’t practical either. The buildings hide the sun. Plus the car gets dirty much quicker than stationary solar panels installation. I would say, the advantage of such vehicle is rather limited.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  Yeah, if the panels are so efficient that 8 hrs of sitting can charge 2 hrs of driving, then just put those panels on your roof and wire them into a garage charger.
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    The advantage is the convenience of not even needing to plug in at all. Quit thinking of solar cells as an expensive, limited commodity. They’re cheap. Cheaper literally than glass. About 10¢ per Watt at the cell level.
    - coryrc 4y ago
      But you still have to plug in. Solar panels on a car will not make enough energy to run the vast majority of cars even if parked always in the sun. And for the few it could, you're using it so little what's the point of even having it?
      - Robotbeat 4y ago
        8 hours in the Sun is good enough for 2 hours of driving, according to that blurb. That’s like 100 miles of range added per day, and the battery can buffer multiple days. Who drives 700 miles per week? Maybe 10%? Aptera’s car charges 40 miles per day, which is the same as the average American’s round trip commute (and can buffer during the weekend as well). The overall end point for solar charging is you’re charging enough that you don’t have to plug in unless you’re going on a road trip. I don’t know why it is hard to understand the basic idea or value of this. Most working people commute by car, and this concept would potentially allow all of the commuting miles by most people to be handled by the Sun. Home charging just no longer required. For sunny parts of the world (where people don’t park in garages, where they could plug in), that’s pretty awesome.
        coryrc 4y ago
        > 8 hours in the Sun is good enough for 2 hours of driving, according to that blurb. That’s like 100 miles of range... Nope! They might want you to think that with misleading wording, but you'd be lucky for 2 hours of driving at 12 mph. And, again, that's only if the car gets full sun the entire day. At those distances, just get an electric bicycle. EDIT: I don't know what blurb you refer to, but my search engine says https://sonomotors.com/en/sion/ https://sonomotors.com/en/sion/ used to say "on average 112km/week".
        Robotbeat 4y ago
        It was jvanderbot’s quip: “Yeah, if the panels are so efficient that 8 hrs of sitting can charge 2 hrs of driving, then just put those panels on your roof and wire them into a garage charger.” Generally, it helps to take comments in context… In his hypothetical, that’s clearly more than enough for the average person’s commute. And even if it isn’t quite enough, it could reduce the frequency you need to make trips to a fast charging station (effectively like having a twice as large of a battery), if you cannot charge at home. Charging stations usually are substantially more expensive than residential, maybe 3-4 times the price, and residential is 4 times the price of utility scale solar power (due to buffering and distribution, etc). So there’s a good financial case for it if you can get the cost low, plus you have the added convenience. Sono’s solar wasn’t very good. Lightyear and Aptera’s ability to add up to 40 miles per day is pretty useful… if they can get the cost down.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    Less than 50% of Americans own a garage or carport. So even if you're right, it's not a useful answer for half of Americans.
nradov 4y ago
There is a physical limitation on making a practical solar powered vehicle. Even if the vehicle is parked outside and uses high efficiency panels it won't get much of a charge. Just a stupid idea from the start, bordering on being a fraud.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  Yeah, I don’t see how people with even a mild understanding of energy and electricity can fall for a car powered solely by solar panels on its exterior. It’s utter snake oil if you look at the energy output of solar panels over time and the energy required to move a car just 1 km with no extra load (no driver).

lnsru 4y ago

They missed the market very badly. Back then the car was somehow innovative. But now is just a poor electric copy of Nissan Leaf/Honda jazz. Plus market is full of Chinese vehicles like MG4, funky cat and dozen others in the same price range. So timing is clearly crucial for a venture to fail or succeed.

HPsquared 4y ago

It's inefficient enough (in terms of costs) to put lots of little solar panels on peoples' roofs, even more so to put even smaller ones on top of cars which are probably parked in the shade half the time. Where's the synergy? Surely it's much more efficient for solar panels to be placed in a solar farm in a sunny location where thousands of panels are procured, built and maintained together utilising economies of scale.

jvanderbot 4y ago
Hell it's probably more efficient to have a solar field in sunny Texas / CA, then ship the energy in battery packs or hydrogen cells to a car in Minnesota.
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  It is not. Particularly the latter.
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    You're right, of course, but I was facetiously comparing vs. a few solar panels in a garage.
timerol 4y ago
Solar panels are dirt cheap, so throwing them approximately everywhere makes good sense. We're not really limited in the number of panels we can produce right now. Rooftop solar is mostly expensive because installed costs are 10x the raw costs (around $3/W total compared to $0.30/W of panels). Installing them in a factory removes that bespoke assembly step. Everything that is manufactured, sits outside, and uses electricity might as well have solar attached
- dale_glass 4y ago
  Panels are cheap, but integrating them into something like a car takes time and effort, and hardware to support charging from solar, all of which costs money. It's even more money if you want to design a car that can obtain any measurable amount of range from solar.

tromp 4y ago

Solar car fans can still pin their hopes on Aptera [1] and on Lightyear which is rising again from bankruptcy [2], though both their futures still look rather shaky... Personally, I think ditching the solar and just focussing on low weight and affordability like luvly [3] does, makes more sense, but obviously those are limited to shorter ranges. [1] https://electrek.co/2023/02/10/aptera-has-raised-3m-of-its-20-50m-crowdfund-goal-offers-new-swag-to-investors/ https://electrek.co/2023/02/10/aptera-has-raised-3m-of-its-2... [2] https://cleantechnica.com/2023/02/22/lightyear-is-launching-back-out-of-bankruptcy/ https://cleantechnica.com/2023/02/22/lightyear-is-launching-... [3] https://www.wallpaper.com/transportation/luvly-o-ev-from-new-swedish-mobility-brand-hoping-to-reinvent-city-car https://www.wallpaper.com/transportation/luvly-o-ev-from-new...

ianai 4y ago
I really hope aptera succeeds. I personally would buy one, but I live and work where I’m surrounded at all times by most of the largest mass production vehicles. I’d never ride a motorcycle around here and feel safe. Solar wise though this is prime territory.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  It might not do well in a collision with an F350, but an Aptera is considerably larger than it looks in pictures. It's wider and higher than a Tesla Model S. It'll fit a surfboard in the trunk, or a bicycle without any disassembly.
- antisthenes 4y ago
  I really hope so too, but from my perspective, Aptera has been in perpetual vaporware since at least 2006. Yes, they evolved into something different now with the advent of EVs, but they still no product to show for all their efforts. And now that 90% of manufacturers have their own EV, I'm not sure Aptera's use case even exists anymore outside of an extremely narrow market niche.
UncleOxidant 4y ago
I hope Altera makes it to production. Solar aside, it's probably the most efficient EV based on weight and drag coefficient. You can plug it into 110V and get plenty of range for commuting, much less strain on the power grid, less battery materials needed.

pg_bot 4y ago

If you do the math, solar powered cars are not going to work. You just don't have the available surface area on a car to provide enough power to charge it in a reasonable timeframe. Plus solar panels add weight and manufacturing complexity. If you're building an electric car you would be better off spending your time trying to make the car more aerodynamic or weigh less. The only way I could see it working in a production vehicle is with an rv that can have its panels fold out while stationary. Any investor worth their salt could do 10 minutes of math and figure out that this is a terrible idea.

ant6n 4y ago
It doesn’t fill the whole tank, but on many days it can add 10-20km of range. Given that commute distances in cities (Europe) can be small, and given that in cities most won’t have their own garage to charge, this means you could get away with charging your car once week instead of twice. In general I’d agree that this solar car thing doesn’t make sense, but Sono did make a compelling case and the whole package kind of made sense. But their execution and timing was off.
- pg_bot 4y ago
  I don't think it's a timing or execution thing. You can have the best engineers and operations on the planet and it still wouldn't work. The benefits of the solar car are just not big enough when compared to a standard electric car.
  - ant6n 4y ago
    Sono had thousands of pre orders, made millions with them. The overall package made sense to those people. And Sono didn’t lie on numbers. You need to spend more than 2 seconds on the target market before making snap judgements. The problem is that in 5 years they didn’t make it to production. And they needed a bunch of money now, just at end of the EV bubble. They also did an IPO way too early, and in the IPO didn’t raise enough to get to production. These are all timing and execution mistakes, not market match/product issues.

snickerer 4y ago

I could buy some electric car and stick solar cells all over the roof. Plus some wiring and a charge controller. That would be about a day's work. If one day I need a car that can, say, play music for days at a festival in the summer, I'll do that. Of course, to improve the range of the car with it, it wouldn't be worth it. The expense of a whole working day would be far too expensive for that. I think solar cars are a scam. The victims are these investors with a good heart (save the planet!) but no clue at all about engineering or science.