Saturday 20/12/2008 Page: 73
A SWISS engineer has completed the first around-the-world trip in a solar energyed car after more than 17 months on the road during which he crossed almost 40 countries. Louis Palmer, 36, arrived back in Lucerne in central Switzerland yesterday in his "solar taxi" after covering 53,451km over four continents. Since his departure on July 3 last year, he travelled through eastern Europe, the Middle East and India before heading to New Zealand, Australia, South-East Asia and China and finally the U.S. He finished his trip after a detour through France, England, Scandinavia and Germany."We have achieved our first world tour without using a single drop of oil," Mr Palmer said at the end of his trip. The three-wheeler solar taxi, which towed a trailer packed with batteries charged by the sun, reached speeds of 90km/h. It had a battery for travel in the night and in cloudy conditions. "One of my goals was to persuade as many people as possible that renewable energy is ecological, economical and reliable," he said.
His vehicle only broke down twice during the tour, he said, and surmounted the extreme heat in the Middle East and the hazardous terrain in America's Rocky Mountains. The small blue-and-white vehicle carried about 1000 passengers in all, including United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Mr Palmer has said the prototype for the solar taxi could be mass-produced, but that it would need serious modifications. He said he planned to travel around the world in 80 days for his next challenge, but in a faster car.
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