The Munich-based mobility startup Sono Motors is putting the decision whether the Sion will hit the road in the hands of the community. After failing to reach its funding goal of €50 million within the originally scheduled 30 days, Sono Motors is now extending the community funding campaign until January 20, 2020.
"We're not ready to give up yet" — In December, founders Jona Christians and Laurin Hahn addressed the community with an emotional video to raise €50 million for the further development of the Sion. With 10,000 Sion reservations, 2,000 full down payments would be needed to continue, Jona Christians calculates in the video.
Sion reservationists want to continue
Since the funding target was not reached at the end of December, Sono Motors asked the Sion reservation holders to vote on the next steps. According to the company, 94 percent of respondents were in favor of to extend the campaignIt now runs until January 20, 2020. So far, Sono Motors has raised around 34 million euros.
Why the community and not investors? The founders comment on this at the Sono Motors page as follows:
"Developing a car with new technologies requires significant investment. So we took the usual routes to finance ourselves. In the course of numerous negotiations with international investors, we repeatedly found that the expectations of the traditional financial world were difficult to reconcile with our goals and values. The most recent negotiations then reached a crucial moment. We were in danger of having to accept the migration of our technologies. That would have meant the end of the Sion."
Experience with the crowd
With crowdfunding, the Munich-based startup is returning to its roots in a way. Back in 2016, the three Sono Motors founders Jona Christians, Navina Pernsteiner and Laurin Hahn were able to raise Kickstarter campaign raises around 300,000 eurosThe Sion prototype was developed with the raised capital. Now it's up to the crowd to bring this prototype to production readiness and onto the road.
