Sion solar car maker wants to provide refrigerated trailers with solar panels

Sono Motors, known for solar car Sion, wants to equip refrigerated truck trailers with solar panels. These solar panels must provide the trailer’s cooling or freezer 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. This concerns 54 panels that have been specifically developed for use in, among other things, truck trailers. These can deliver a peak power of 9.8kW and are linked to a battery. For example, the trailer must be able to continue to cool or freeze its contents.

sono stilt that this system can save 3400 liters of diesel per trailer annually. In peak conditions this could be 8,475 liters of diesel. The CO2 savings in a normal year with this system would be about 9 tons. Making the solar panel system costs about 6.5 tons of CO2. So after less than a year, the system is better than the diesel-powered alternative in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, Sono says.

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

The trial is being conducted by Sono Solar, a business unit of Sono Motors involved in integrating solar panels into vehicles. The German Sono Motors is working on the Sion itself, a solar car with a 54 kWh LFP battery that can charge 112 kilometers per week of range with solar panels. The Sion should go into production next year and costs 28,500 euros.