Sion solar car maker wants to equip cooling trailers with solar panels

Sono Motors, known for its solar car Sion, wants to equip refrigerated truck trailers with solar panels. These solar panels must provide the cooling or freezer of the trailer with energy. Now the trailers still use a diesel engine for this.

The company will first provide a test trailer with 58.9 square meters of solar panels to see whether the plan is technically and financially feasible. It concerns 54 panels that have been specifically developed for use in truck trailers, among other things. These can deliver a peak power of 9.8kW and are connected to a battery. For example, the trailer must be able to keep cooling or freezing its contents.

Sono stilt that this system can save 3400 liters of diesel per trailer annually. In peak conditions this could be 8475 liters of diesel. The CO2 savings would be about 9 tons in a normal year with this system. Making the solar panel system costs about 6.5 tons of CO2. After less than a year, the system is therefore better in terms of carbon dioxide emissions than the diesel alternative, says Sono.

For the trial, Sono has signed an agreement with refrigerated trailer manufacturer Reefer Group. Together with Chereau, a French subsidiary of Reefer, Sono will make and test the solar panel trailer. Sono sees the refrigerated trailer market as a growth market, because there is an increasing demand for medicines, frozen products and fast food. These require truck trailers that can cool or freeze.

The test is being carried out by Sono Solar, a division of Sono Motors that deals with the integration of solar panels in vehicles. The German Sono Motors is itself working on the Sion, a solar car with a 54 kWh LFP battery that can charge a range of 112 kilometers per week with solar panels. The Sion must go into production next year and costs 28,500 euros.