Sono Sion Solar Paneled Electric car

A Munich Germany based company Sono Motors aims to build an unpainted plastic-panelled, solar cell covered urban hatchback primarily. It is primarily for Europe, its been largely crowdfunded with a successful $58 million round. The car will be made with China’s NEVS at the Trollhattan, Sweden, plant that produced generations of Saabs.

Sono Sion Solar Paneled Electric car

Sono is working with Finland’s Valoe Oyj for solar components, Germany’s ElringKlinger for the battery systems, and Continental for drive components, it’s doing a lot of the development work on its own.

The Solar cars have packaged their cells largely on the roof and the solar cells only produce their peak power when the sun is directly overhead that hits the panel at a 90-degree angle. It is having solar cells on all the panels, 248 of them in the Sion.

Squad 2-seater solar electric car

Not every cell generates the same amount of power, because our energy supplier, the sun, move constantly,” the company’s photovoltaic power electronics expert explained. Furthermore, not all solar cells on the Sion point in the same direction.

Its divided a maximum power point tracking central unit to adjust the load on solar modules individually. The cells in that module can perform to the optimum level. With the new unit, the Sion converts to the voltage of the high-voltage battery, between 300 and 400 volts, in a single process that aims to reduce losses.

The company plans to use NMC 622 prismatic cells, with 12 per module and a total of 16 modules in 35-kWh water-cooled pack. That will provide a total range of 160 miles.