#44 (EN): Tour Wrap-Up, Crashtest-Pre-Test, Interviews
Have a nice Sunday. The US tour is over, the crew is traveling back. At the end there were again nice pictures from San Francisco at the Golden Gate Bridge, and from Los Angeles from an event warehouse.
+++ IT’S A WRAP ++
The tour went on for more than three weeks, and if you look at the latest videos, the realization seems to have matured that the Sion also has to go to the USA.
CNBC - 3.5 million subscribers after all - headlines: "Take a look at the Sono Sion solar electric car launching in the U.S."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDB724JxEvY
And the Youtuber "Kaz" (1,200 subscribers) also asks specifically at minute 21 "When will this come to the U.S.?", and the answer is quite clear, Europe first, but then the U.S. must follow:
Source: Sono Motors: https://twitter.com/SonoMotors/status/1586347645295296513
+++ WHAT NEXT ? +++
The question that drives many reservation holders around is: What did the tour deliver? The pictures are great, of course, the view from Brooklyn to New York, the Golden Gate without fog - you have to get up early for that. On the other hand, there was no public "shake hands" with major investors. Talks apparently did happen, that became clear in the videos.
Others are also thinking about the tour:
The Motley Fool writes in detail about the U.S. tour and the stock price. An interesting article by Ralf Anders, which tries to outline the situation and is quite positive in essence. The title first wakes up:
"Sono Motors: US promotion a total flop so far?".
According to the article, the concept of both divisions (car and solar business) is indeed well received, and both have a promising order book. The first year of production and beyond is already completely sold by reservations and B2B orders, even if not all reservers convert their order. The Sion comes off well, "And at CleanTechnica recently, for example, it was said that this electric vehicle would be worth waiting for."
In the middle of the article, it's all about the stock:
"I think the real problem lies elsewhere. In June, management announced that it had agreed to a flexible equity facility of up to $150 million with a specialized lender. This form of financing is feared by investors and has caused many growth companies to crash.
The rule here is that the more the share price falls, the greater the threat of dilution. At the $1.50 share price, over 100 million new shares would potentially be issued at the discount, more than doubling. What Sono needs now is the confidence of the market. The stock markets have carried quite a few other companies through a valley, only to have them flourish afterwards. But they can also be merciless."
https://www.fool.de/2022/10/25/sono-motors-die-us-promotion-war-bisher-ein-totaler-flop/
+++ QUESTIONS TO SONO ON THE US-TOUR +++
Your questions about the US tour have of course not gone unnoticed, Laurin answers them in a small video:
Why is Sono in the US?
Investors tMeeting, Media tMeeting, Community tMeetingWhat is a roadshow?
Meeting investors at several stopsWhy is the Sion only going on tour in the USA?
First the car was shown at the "Celebrate" event, but now they had to go to investors in the U.S. and do the same thereWho is on tour?
10 people - management, PR, engineersIs the tour sustainable?
No. And he is struggling with it, but says it’s necessary.Why money for tour instead of development?
Has to be, because there is more money needed for development and production, and that requires such a tourWhere does the tour take place?
NY, Boston, SF, LA, Detroit - because those are the hotspots for investors and media and strategic partners.When do we get to see the SVC3 in Europe?
The SVC3 will be back and can be seen in the showroom in Munich and will also go on tour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcSZ3lLPehE
+++ BEAT THE BUSH: CFO Interview +++
"BeatTheBush" has over 350,000 followers on YouTube and is "banging the bush" with companies - and is one of the few to have a public interview with CFO Torsten:
"I spoke with Torsten Kiedel, Sono Motors' CFO, about the solar electric car, the Sono Point system, and the company's finances. Enjoy."
A lot of what we already know comes first, on technology. Surprisingly, the question about the Sono Points is followed up immediately. Someone has done a lot of research.
Question: 90 million in the bank 35 million have been spent, how will it continue, how long will the money last and how will it be financed?
Torsten confirms that money is still needed, and this is also true for all similar start-ups. He explains that Sono works very efficiently, among other things through Valmet as a contract manufacturer, thus some assets (e.g. buildings) are not even needed. Torsten is also unfortunately not allowed to answer the question whether now is a good time to get into the stock. However, he emphasizes that there are both business areas - Sion and Solar. The licensing of solar technology offers a lot of potential, as the TCO (total cost of ownership) can be reduced for customers. The division is growing. The Sion proves that it can be done, which is why it is being shown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXKn99tsc0o
+++ SIBROS +++
Sibros was one of the highlights of last week. The start-up from Silicon Valley is the partner for the connectivity of the Sion, from "door opening" via app to software updates "over-the-air". How difficult it is to develop this kind of software can be seen at VW, which is spending many billions with Cariad.
There is a lot being demonstrated about connectivity. At the core, they simply have a flexible CAN bus data logger in the vehicle that can also push out updates to the ECUs. What might interest some here - you can also turn that off completely, then they don't see anything, but then of course you can't do anything with the app. Sono made sure of that.
In the middle of it all, they even showed live solar generation readings for each string over the course of the day. You can't create more transparency than CAN bus registers and show readings to prove that generation can be measured and is being measured. This does not yet answer the question of how much has arrived in the battery at the end of the day, but I think this has already earned scene applause. One value still seems suspicious to me, driver side down has a negative generation. Maybe there is a wrong value in the DBC file or the MCU delivers wrong values here, no showstopper.
You can't really provide. more proof that the solar generation is measured than the CAN bus Logfiles Source: Sibros company video (Youtube)
Thomas gives us another tour of the car in the video. Some questions that we already know are addressed, surface finish, CCS connection, space - also how you can sit in the back with three people.
If you look closely in the video, you can see the chassis numbers of the SVC3s that are already "alive". The number always starts with "WS7" (vehicle manufacturer from Germany), then "SUN" - the identifier for the Sion, then many numbers around at the end the number of the validation vehicles. If you look closely, you can see that only the 4 and the 9 are missing from the first 10, but already the 13 is built for crash tests.
Source: YouTube (Sibros)
+++ TOO COOL +++
Drive The Lightning is a rather small (1,600 subscribers) YouTube channel by Chad and Sarah from Detroit. It is interesting that Laurin has his say several times and talks about another crossover model (from min. 7), which could follow the Sion. In addition, the solar concept including the MCU is discussed again at about minute 9.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFrC7nGYV3A
+++ CNBC +++
CNBC is quite well known in the USA and also reports:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYb3sw795sA
+++ WRECKING BALL +++
The big crash tests are coming, and SVC 3.11 to SVC 3.16 are being built for them. They are already testing what happens at the front when a head hits the panel. Pedestrian protection is also the reason for the lack of a frunk/front trunk. The hard front tailgate already gives deductions in the B grade, solar on the hood is a challenge but looks "mastered" in the video, I'm very curious how Lightyear implements that.
And: what happens after the classification in the crash tests under the hood at the customer, is then no longer important after homologation.
https://twitter.com/LaurinHahn/status/1584076283574571009?
+++ FUN FACT +++
The Sion has been discussed very critically since 2016 in a small subsection "Prototypes" on GoingElectric. Now that Sono has the first vehicles with chassis numbers on the road, it has made the leap to its own main section. With almost 30,000 posts, Sono has been discussed there already more than Audi, Jaguar, Fiat and Volvo combined.
https://www.goingelectric.de/forum/
Stay healthy!
Sebastian und Astrid