32,000 Miles on No Gallons of Gas; Swiss Teacher Completes World Tour in Solar Energy-Powered Car

Louis Palmer (right) gives a lift to Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the climate change conference being held in Poznan, Poland. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz)

Electric cars are the current rage, what with Better Place’s globetrotting marketing, most recently in Hawaii, and other developments all over the place. “Swiss adventurer” Louis Palmer rolled into Poznan, Poland yesterday after a 17-month, 32,000-mile journey through 38 countries in an electric car.

Palmer timed his arrival for the start of a United Nations climate conference that’s working on a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The plan is to ratify the new treaty at an international conference next December in Copenhagen, Denmark, where Better Place will build another of its electric car networks.

Hawaii is getting a fair amount of media attention thanks to Better Place’s initiative here; the Salt Lake Tribune even added a blurb about the proposed electric car network in Hawaii when it rewrote the Associated Press story out of Poznan.

Just like the electric panels on a trailer hitched to Palmer’s car, Hawaii doesn’t mind hitching itself to renewable energy initiatives launched elsewhere -- the more the merrier.