by Patrick May – Mercury News – 02/25/2009

From stem to stern across the continent, skirting blacktop and blue highway in his oddball little electric car, Marcelo da Luz has devoted the last eight months of his life to following the sun.

Solar Powered UFO

It keeps him going. It powers the silicon cells covering his three-wheeled roadster like a rattlesnake skin, bringing his record-breaking quest this week to Palo Alto, where he’s taking a break. And it fuels his solar evangelism, sharing with a fossil-fueled world his passion for sun power.

After three seasons on a drive to set the world’s distance record for a solar-powered vehicle, this addiction to sunlight has turned da Luz into a daydreamy vagabond — over his head in debt, at the mercy of strangers, dependent on the 26 lithium-ion batteries pushing him through a world governed by serendipity.

“I’ve got no wife, no kids — only a cat, and she probably doesn’t remember me anymore,” da Luz, 40, said the other day, waiting out the rain at a friend’s place in Palo Alto. “I lost my girlfriend and my job because of this crazy passion. It’s bizarre, but this journey has become everything for me.”

The vehicle seems as unlikely as its creator, a Brazilian-born former flight attendant with no scientific or engineering experience. His car’s flattened fiberglass sheath, floating less than three feet off the ground, has turned heads from Toronto to Vancouver and the Golden Gate Bridge. Residents in one Alaska town called the cops to report a UFO rolling through their neighborhood. [See full article here...]

.

admin Transportation