Just visiting.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - Editorial

Recently, we had an interesting visitor stop by, almost from another planet. Marcelo da Luz pulled up in a solar car that looked like a spaceship. Sleek blue on top with a gray bubble of a window, the car is so low to the ground it's not even three feet high. It has two wheels in front and one in back, and the chassis looks like a kayak.

Marcelo da Luz made this car himself, and he's trying to set a world record by drMng it 10,000 miles from Buffalo, New York, to Inuvik, Canada, up in the Arctic Circle.

"Some people go to the gas station to fill their tank," he says. "We just pull over."

The car has an electric engine, "but instead of plugging it into a wall, we plug it into the sun," he says. It has solar cells just like solar panels on people's homes, and it is built out of foam covered in fiberglass.

It goes from zero to fifty in six seconds, he says, and can reach a top speed of seventy-five miles per hour.

Da Luz is "promoting the idea of clean and sustainable energy," he says.

But he has a sharper point to make.

"If we're waiting for governments to save the planet, it's not going to happen," he tells me.

To find out more about this amazing car, and the man behind it, go to www.xofl .com.

It's people like Marcelo da Luz that may revolutionize the way we get around. And not a moment too soon.

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