Solar-Powered Car Confounds Police, UFO Hunters

Marcelo da Luz says he's doing what he can for energy independence: The Canadian has been driving across North America in a solar-powered car. The only trouble is that police have pulled over the saucer-shaped vehicle seven times, including in Alaska, where somebody called in a UFO sighting to 911.

A bit of hilarious news: Alaska doesn’t get much action, really, so it’s no surprise that police thought they were pulling over a UFO when they saw the above solar car tooling down the road. I’d probably have thought the same thing, except that UFOs are unidentified FLYING objects…

But it was just Marcelo da Luz in his Xof1 taking a jaunt across the state to try and set a world record. A citizen dialed 911 upon seeing the vehicle, and police chased it down but didn’t do more than ask him what was up with the crazy car.

He might have responded:

The Power of One Solar Car Project, or Xof1 for short, was initially developed with the intention to compete in the prestigious World Solar Challenge. Instead their car set off to break the world distance record for a solar car. The space age looking car weighs roughly 660 lbs (300kg) with driver and the entire top body of the car is covered by solar cells and tops out at 75mph (120 km/hr).

It's just one of 7 times he's been pulled over during the race, so he might possibly have come up with something a little more creative or colorful by this point...