Sono Motors solar cell clad Sion

Sono Motors solar cell clad Sion

Sono Motors solar cell clad Sion

I’ve blogged before about solar cells being integrated into ships and planes, and this week I came across a story of Indian trains having them, and many experimental solar cell clad cars compete each year in a race across Australia. It now looks likely that the first solar cell clad car is going to go into commercial production, assuming it can get 5,000 pre-orders. Munich based start-up Sono Motors have just successfully Crowdfunded and launched the Sion. (Great videos) It looks to me to be the coolest electric car in the world and is being sold for the very modest price of £14,500 or 16,000 Euros, excluding the battery, which currently costs an extra 4,000 Euros, but this figure is falling rapidly as battery prices continue to come down. Currently the world’s largest selling electric car is the Nissan Leaf, despite the Tesla’s massive hype. The Sion will be considerably cheaper than either of these, and has a lot of additional features, such as the solar cells, that make it very much cooler. Perhaps the most novel feature is its living moss air filter. The battery has a power take off so that it can be used to charge up other electric cars, for power tools or to sell electricity to the grid.

It is a family sized car totally covered in 330 high specification solar cells, which even on a cloudy day should generate enough electricity to drive 30Kms. With a full battery it has a range of 250Kms. The car is designed for car sharing and lift sharing and comes complete with apps to help these systems.

The UK government has announced its predictably unimpressive goal to rid the country of diesel and petrol cars by 2040. As one might expect much of the press and the incumbent motor industry is bleating about how this could undermine the existing motor industry or require many new power stations. The reality is that this is part of a globally disruptive series of changes that are needed to tackle a human health crisis and the climate crisis. Getting people out of their cars and into public transport is clearly happening in many cities around the world, and needs to happen on a very much greater scale.

I, like a growing number of people do not own a car but share the ownership and use of a number of cars through a car share club. Our club, St James and Bartonsham car share club currently owns four cars, all still fossil fuelled. We hope before too long to switch to electric or hydrogen fuel cell. I’ve written before about Riversimple’s Rasa, probably the most sustainable and best car on the planet. The Sono Motors Sion looks to me to be another one of the best. Note Sono like Riversimple is a tiny start-up. Most of the big volume car makers now have all electric models, but none seem to be so ground breaking as the Rasa or the Sion.

Globally it is estimated that the fossil fuel industry is being subsidized to the tune of $5 trillion per year. We should curtail all such subsidies immediately and aid the speedy end of ‘The Fossil Fuel Age’ and invest in the coming ‘Solar Age’.  In the UK electric car sales make up just 2% of new car sales, while in Norway the figure is 42%. The mayor of Oslo says that she wants her city to have the cleanest air of any city in the world. Reducing the number of cars on the road, having as many of them as shared use as possible and making sure that the actual cars are as minimally polluting as possible are all part of this desired policy, and the Rasa and Sion seem to me to be the cars that best fit this goal.

 

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