After more than a year on the road, the Solartaxi, designed to go all around the world using solar energy, will make a stop at UCLA on Tuesday.
The UCLA Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science will host the arrival of this solar-powered vehicle along with driver and inventor, Louis Palmer, a Swiss solar pioneer.
“I cannot change the world, but I can show people that we have solutions to stop global warming and ways to become independent from fossil fuels,” Palmer said. “We raise awareness mostly through the media; this way we have reached about an estimated 300 million people with our message.”
The message is that cleaner and more sustainable energy is available, and in a time of depleting fossil fuel resources and soaring gas prices, the time to implement newer technologies is now, Palmer said.
During his presentation at UCLA, Palmer will open up his Solartaxi and invite people to take a ride on solar technology as he has done all around the world.
The Solartaxi, which took three years to build, has been on the road since July 3, 2007, when it set off from Lucerne, Switzerland, to make stops all around the world to show people that cleaner technology is available and is waiting to be incorporated into society.
Two-thirds of Palmer’s journey has been completed, and he has stopped in locations all across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, New Zealand, Australia and more. His goal is to go 50,000 kilometers and visit 50 countries and five continents to set the world record for the first motor vehicle to travel around the world free from fossil fuels.
With speeds on the taxi reaching 40 to 50 mph, the vehicle is equipped with a trailer of solar panels which feed energy into the car’s battery, allowing the car to run on stored energy when the sun is down. Palmer also designed the two-seater’s steering wheel to slide horizontally to the passenger’s side and back, allowing him to switch driver sides in countries like England and Australia whose residents drive on the opposite side of the road compared to the U.S.
The car gives people the opportunity to experience and grasp the existence of cleaner ways to get around. The taxi uses electricity from a 100 percent renewable energy source which releases no emissions into the atmosphere and makes saving the planet a more realistic goal, he added.
“I have not paid a single cent for gasoline after driving two-thirds around the world so far,” Palmer said in a press release. It is through this trip around the world that Palmer is demonstrating that sustainable technologies are ready for use by the public, and active steps can already be taken to reverse the effects of climate change.
“We have the resources, but we are focused on other things,” said Tony Pereira, a UCLA doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering and founder of the Institute of Sustainable Energy at UCLA. “We need to reverse these past 50 years and implement new economic policies and theories that will look at society in the future.”
With gas prices soaring and the planet’s resources running low, Pereira said that even if we stop emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere today, the damage that has already been done cannot be reversed enough to stop global warming. However, he said if we do not slow down our consumption of energy, humans will continue causing massive extinctions of species, destroying the great diversity of the planet Earth.
David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, supports the Solartaxi venture and said that every type of research needs to be conducted to find alternative energy sources and effective ways to save it.
“The U.S. in particular must reduce its energy consumption by 50 percent before new technologies can be implemented,” Pimentel said. “We already use three times more energy than that which is produced, so we have to change.”
Pimentel said that in the future, researchers must look into creating better battery life for electric cars, but lifestyle changes must occur as well. For example, he said people should inhabit smaller dwellings and live much closer to work. Then less energy will be needed, and electric and solar energy can replace the rest.
“We need all the research now to save the planet,” Pimentel added.
With the drive to bring awareness to the world about these issues, Palmer also plans to announce the start of a solar race around the world. The goal of the Jules Verne World Solar Tour will be to bring communities together in finding new ways to use less energy and go completely solar. Palmer will announce this challenge to travel the world in 80 days with only solar power at UCLA on Tuesday during his presentation.
Named in honor of the novel “Around the World in 80 days,” the race is set to begin in December 2009 and will continue to spread Palmer’s message: that life with the use of less and nontoxic energy is possible. By going around the world, Palmer wants to show that this must be a global effort if we are going to save the planet.
“They love to see the car in every country. There are always crowds around the car and people always asking us the same questions like, “˜What is the max speed?'” Palmer said.
“It is interesting to see that the reactions of the people are the same all over the world, no matter if we are in Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, China or in the U.S. Everyone is interested in this new technology and in the new possibilities it offers.”