In a blink-and-you-miss-it moment this week, one of the most interestingelectric vehicle (EV) startupsin the worldwent publicthrough a super successful initial public offering (IPO).
That company is the Germany-based Sono Group(NASDAQ:SEV) – a small EV company that’s unlike any other electric vehicle firm on the planet. This isn’t the next Tesla(NASDAQ:TSLA),nor is it the next Lucid Group(NASDAQ:LCID) or Rivian(NASDAQ:RIVN)… and that’s by design.
Because, while all those EV makers are making plug-in electric vehicles, Sono is making the world’s firstsolar electric vehicle, or “SEV.”
Soaring 150%-plus from its $15 IPO price Wednesday, investors have sat up to take notice of this company that is helmed by a CEO barely out of university.
Indeed, at age 26, Sono founder Laurin Hahn cuts a very different image than your typical CEO. Hahn’s an environmentalist and idealist at heart, which is why Sono’s goal isn’t just to sell cars, but to “implement an innovative CO2-neutral mobility concept.” Out of that vision comes the Sion– an understated, no-frills attempt at designing an effective solar EV for the masses.
And unlike the glossy, leather-clad premium electric vehicles dominating most conversations around EVs, the Sion actually feels like a vehicle designed to put the world on the right path toward net-zero carbon emissions.
To ensure its vision aligned with the needs of everyday drivers, the company’s signature vehicle – the Sion – had its users in mind from the very beginning. Everything from the color and upholstery of the car to the voltage and resulting range of the battery was voted on by a community of 15,000.
As for its look, the Sion essentially replaces the exterior aluminum and paint on an electric car with 248 flexible solar modules that are perfectly adapted to the shape of the vehicle.
The car looks, drives, and acts just like any other mass-market EV. But as it drives, it charges itself through these solar cells. There’s a still a battery at the core of the vehicle, but it doesn’t rely on being plugged in – the battery can be recharged by simply leaving it out in the sun.
The huge value-add here, of course, is solving so-called EV “range anxiety,” or the fear that EVs won’t be able to drive you as far as you need to go.
To-date, such fears have proven very legitimate. After all, your typical EV today fetches around 250 miles of driving range. Your average gas car can travel up to 400 miles per tank. So, yes, EVs have historically been limiting in terms of how far they can travel.
Sono Motors believes that its solar EV tech will fix this issue. And while it is a very innovative solution that we find super interesting, there’s just one small issue:It doesn’t actually solve the “range anxiety” problem.
Sono’s claim is that its solar cells collectively add about 70 miles of driving range to its Sion EV, which has a built-in driving range of 190 miles. Add it up, and even with these solar panels, the Sion still gets less than 300 miles of real-time driving range – much less than the 400 miles a gas-powered car fetches per tank.
But solar technology is not static –it’s very dynamic. And right now, scientists across the globe are working on multiple solar technology breakthroughs to dramatically improve the performance of solar cells. One such promising breakthrough is the inclusion of perovskites in solar cells. Perovskites are a very flexible material, and therefore, could be included in Sono’s solar mobility tech to significantly improve the performance of these SEVs.
In other words, while solar electric vehicles are cool, the underlying solar cell technology here is still many years away from being robust enough to actually solve EV range anxiety fears.
That’s the bad news.
The good news, though, is that we don’t evenneedsolar electric vehicles to solve range anxiety…
Because there is another breakthrough battery technology being pioneered today, which is ready to add not just 70 or 80 miles of driving range to an EV – but potentially thousands of miles of driving range to an EV, thereby allowing electric cars to travel as much as 10X as far as gas-powered cars on a single charge.
These batteries are the future and will forever solve the EV “range anxiety” problem.
It’s simple, really… With them, EVs will last forever.
The technology behind these forever batteries is exceptionally complex – so complex, in fact, that no one has been able to make one big enough to power an electric car yet.
But that’s changing right now, as some companies in this space have – for the first time ever – built small-scale “forever batteries” that are working. Now, all these companies have to do is scale these batteries and make them bigger.
Make no mistake. They’re going to do just that. And the companies behind this forever battery technology will turn into titans of the EV industry.
Not to mention,their stocks will score shareholders enormous returns.