Going Well Beyond the Sion Solar Electric Car Developed by Sono Motors, the App Is Designed to Increase the Capacity Utilization of Private Cars by 150 Percent
Munich – Sono Motors, the company that is aiming to revolutionize the future of solar-powered transportation, recently launched the Sono Carsharing app. Sono Motors is therefore reacting to the untapped potential of around 43 million cars in Germany that are driven for a daily average of an hour. The app allows vehicles of all brands to be shared within a community of trusted people. Pilot projects conducted by Sono Motors have shown that this can potentially increase the utilization of private vehicles by 150 percent and make it possible to reduce monthly costs for car owners by up to 85 percent. Sono Motors is now following up on this and is expanding the app to include the “Find a Community” service. Car owners can now publicly have their vehicles shown in the app and thus not only share with people they already know, but also find new members for their community more easily. Conversely, people who do not own a car can find existing communities nearby and connect with them. The app has great potential above all outside conurbations where other car-sharing providers are not present or only present on a small scale.
Strengthening the Community Feeling and Sense of Responsibility
The great difference between Sono Carsharing and the offerings from competitors is the fact that the sharing community is defined and managed by the vehicle owners themselves. This creates a genuine feeling of belonging to a community, and the sense of responsibility for the loaned vehicle is also increased. Uncomplicated third-party driver insurance is already included in case a vehicle is damaged. The Sono Carsharing app can be downloaded free from the App Store or Google Play. After the vehicle owner has registered themselves and their car, the car can be published visibly on the platform and community building can start. Physical handover of vehicle keys is currently supported by a seamless process within the Sono app. A retrofit option for these vehicles to permit keyless handover is already in the planning stage.
The vehicle can be reserved either in advance, for example, for weekend trips, or also booked spontaneously for excursions at short notice after prior agreement. After use, the car must be returned to a “home zone” defined by the vehicle owner. The vehicle owners themselves set the prices. Billing is per minute, distance driven or based on a flat rate.
Car-Sharing Platform Without Its Own Fleet
“Three things were important for us when designing the Sono Carsharing app: how can we reduce the number of cars on our roads while at the same time increasing the utilization of all the vehicles that are just standing around, and also, as a higher-level goal, make significantly more efficient use of vehicles as a resource? The concept originally developed exclusively for the Sion was not enough for us, so we expanded the scope to include all private cars. With the service expansion now launched, we are reacting to the feedback we have received from our customers. We are making connecting and community building even easier and at the same time increasing vehicle utilization,” says Johannes Bückle, Head of Product at Sono Digital.
“Sono Carsharing is an important part of our business model and our vision of a world without fossil fuels. When the Sion is launched, our goal is to become the largest car-sharing platform in Germany with the app – and to achieve this by connecting the community instead of by owning our own vehicle fleet. The app is already proving to be popular and the feedback from the community is very promising,” says Jona Christians, CEO and Co-founder of Sono Motors.
