About two years ago, I first heard of the German startup Sono Motors.
It was a small article that they were awarded €200.000 to develop a new car.
I laughed at it at first, because €200.000 to think of a car,
sounds pretty good, but €200.000 to develop a car?
That's nothing. The €200.000 turned into a few million,
and that's still nothing. If they cough once on the R&D-section of big car companies,
and the money will be gone. Today, I stopped laughing,
because I'm here on the public roads with the Sono Sion.
This is still a prototype, so don't mind the cracks, rattles and stuff that doesn't fit.
Next year, it's supposed to be ready for production.
But what is the Sono Sion actually? Well, it's a fully electric car, but that isn't very special anymore.
It's powered by an 80 kWh electric motor, which powers the rear wheels.
What makes it special however, and you can see that in the design,
it's a car full of solar cells. On the hood, rear, sides,
there are solar cells everywhere. That way, a part of the car can be charged.
On a nice and sunny day, you can get up to 30 km extra from the sun.
Energy from the skies. If the summers are becoming like what they are now,
this car has a very bright future.
There's a little bit of idealism behind this idea of course. I just spoke with the founder of the company,
and he told me it's time to get rid of oil. It has to be different and more sustainable.
It should also be very accessible. It's going to cost €16.000, including taxes.
€16.000. Sure, you'll have to buy the battery, which'll cost you an additional €4.000.
But you'll be driving fully electrical. You can also share it, because there'll be a program around it.
You can share it with an app, so if you're not using it, you can share it with people who need it.
It's sharable. Also, it's even plug-out,
so you can transfer electricity to something else, on a campsite for example.
You can get electricity out of the car, and the car will be plugged into the network,
so you can share electricity with others. There's a very innovative system behind it.
To keep it as cheap as possible, it's incredibly standard and basic.
You can't choose anything. Even the color, this black one, is the only one available.
It's not really true that you can't choose anything, because they had a black one and a white one,
and via an internet vote, the majority chose for black.
That's why this car is black. They used the same strategy for other things,
the design of the headlights for example.
It's a five-seater, it can do 140 km/h, which isn't too quick, but quick enough for the Netherlands.
It'll do 0-100 in 9 seconds, but those things aren't really important.
What is important is that it can do 250 on a single charge, and that isn't based on the NEDC-values, but tested in real life.
The interior is very basic. You still have some i3-components,
this lever for example and the parts for the airconditioning. It can all be changed in the future.
The materials might be different. Also, very remarkable,
in the dashboard and in the rear, there's green stuff.
It's moss from Iceland, and it's supposed to ionize the car.
Moss in your car, yep.
Other than that, the drive is pretty decent. It's not special or anything,
but it feels pretty solid for a prototype. If you put your foot down, there's a good amount of torque.
250 Nm to be precise, and you've got 80 kW, which is about 109 horsepower.
It's pretty good for a car like this, and it's got a towing hook as standard.
Like I said, everything on here is standard, you can't tick any options.
The towing hook is standard, because they say electric cars can't tow anything anymore.
This car is supposed to be able to tow 750 kg, and because you can't get anything as an extra,
the towing hook a standard feature.
At this moment, Sono Motors already has 7.000 customers who are interested.
That number is going to rise, because they'll be touring through Germany and the Netherlands.
You can sign up for a test drive in this very car. They're aiming for a production of 50.000 a year.
That's pretty ambitious, but they already have a manufacturer somewhere in Europe.
It's a seasoned manufacturer, and for services and repairs, you can visit a company,
but they don't want to say which one, but it's a big one in Europe.
They've already sold several hundreds of them in the Netherlands, and they see our country as an important one when it comes to...
electric driving, and I can't blame them.
It could be possible that you're going to see the Sono Sion on Dutch roads pretty often.