For a guy who hasn't burned a whiff of gasoline in five months, Marcelo da Luz spends a lot of time pleading with traffic cops.
In Alaska, they appeared on his tail after a freaked-out local reported a UFO on the road. The police hung back, sizing up Mr. da Luz's silent little car, before blocking the road ahead of him with flashing lights.
It was the ninth time in three months he'd been pulled over.
Such encounters are to be expected when your daily drive looks like - depending on the view - an elongated flying saucer or a magnified cockroach.
"One woman near Vernon actually got scared and ran away at the sight of the car," says the Toronto-based Mr. da Luz from a Bellingham, Wash., brewpub.
Thankfully for Mr. da Luz, people usually let their guard down when they realize he intends to save the human race rather than vaporize it.
Last month, he set the Guinness World Record for distance travelled in a sun-powered car, more than 15,000 kilometres from Buffalo to Halifax to Inuvik to Victoria. Now he's embarking on a second leg, which could take him as far as Argentina if his finances hold up.
Most impressive about the record is that Mr. da Luz is neither a corporate-backed thrill-seeker like Virgin CEO Richard Branson, nor a greenpreneur, that growing class of environmentally focused, business-savvy entrepreneurs who hope to squeeze profits from their inventions and plans.
Rather he's just an Air Canada flight attendant with a dream, a hare-brained innocent in the high-minded world of solar transport.
Yet, he's rewriting the record book mile by mile.
"I don't have a final destination," he says in an accent that betrays his Brazilian roots.
"If you can mesh Forrest Gump and the 'If you build it' mantra of Field of Dreams together, that's me."
The road to the record started in 1987. A 19-year-old Mr. da Luz saw footage of the World Solar Challenge race in Australia and decided he would one day set the world record.
Then life got in the way.
"I kept putting myself down, telling myself that I didn't have the money or the engineering expertise," he says. "But eventually not following my dream became too painful."
In 1999, he officially launched the Power of One solar car project, knocking on the doors of more than 1,300 companies looking for financial support.
He didn't get a penny.
The tight-fisted rejection could have been a response to Mr. da Luz's business plan, or lack thereof.
"I haven't filed for any patents. I don't stand to make a penny. I just want to prove that the technology exists to save the planet today. I want to save the world, but I can't do it by myself."
No, to save the world he would need engineers.
"Marcelo came to me with a lot of ideas, but not a lot of expertise," said Ken Ellis, an engineering professor at Seneca College, where students and faculty volunteered countless hours of labour to the project. "It was such an interesting project I had to get involved. It goes to show that if you have a passion for something, anything, you will do well at it."
Mr. da Luz has mortgaged his house, blown $500,000 (his entire life savings) and called in every favour he could to get the project off the ground.
"I'm putting my old Honda Civic up for sale right now," he says. "It's the last thing I own."
He also broke up with a "wonderful, wonderful girlfriend" soon after embarking on the project in 1999.
"I haven't been so good at balancing the car with life."
But the payoff came in 2005, when it was ready for testing: a 3-foot-high, 15-foot-long fibreglass sliver capable of up to 120 kilometres an hour.
One problem: He couldn't get a permit to drive it in Ontario.
