GLOBAL warming can be stopped. This is the message Swiss adventurer Louis Palmer wants to drive home - literally.

The 36-year-old language teacher is in Singapore as part of his trip cruising around the world on a $250,000 sponsored solar-powered car.

Speaking to the media yesterday at the Swiss Club, Mr Palmer, who can speak German, English and French, recalled the birth of the idea.

"I want to show the world that one can drive a car around the world with the use of only the solar energy, just sunshine. It's free energy, and it's really time to use these cars," Mr Palmer enthused.

The two-seater car which took three years to build, is a joint effort between the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and three Swiss universities of applied sciences. Mr Palmer started his adventure from Lucerne, Switzerland, with a support team of two to four people, on July 3 last year.

Weighing 500kg, much lighter than a typical Japanese sedan, the 3.5-metre long car is half fuelled by solar panels on a 250kg trailer, which it carts along.

The other half is powered by electricity he generated from solar panels, that was stored into the Swiss network. This is a "pay-it-forward" scheme, where he can only take a certain amount of electricity each time, not exceeding what he contributed.

Mr Palmer stressed that the idea of this tour is to spread awareness to consumers and car manufacturers, and not to race. He added that if he cruises along at 50km to 60km per hour, he can travel up to about 400km in one day.

The green enthusiast, who is moving on to Malaysia today, has already been to 21 countries including Singapore and Saudi Arabia, but he hopes to hit another 19 countries on the route back to Switzerland. All in, Mr Palmer targets to cover five continents and over 40,000km in 18 months.

This article was first published in my paper on Mar 28, 2008.