Louis Palmer in the solar-powered taxi. Picture by Amit Datta

A Swiss and a German are on a world tour in a solar-powered taxi to encourage people to use renewable energy and spread awareness about the effects of global warming.

After covering 13,000 km, Louis Palmer (a teacher in Switzerland) and Thomas Gottschalk (an engineer from Germany) reached Calcutta on Sunday. They will head for Indonesia on Tuesday.

“This is the first-ever world tour in a solar car. We started from Switzerland on July 3 and have covered 13,000 km. Our goal is to cover at least 50,000 km, across 50 countries in five continents, in a year,” said Palmer, 35, who has designed the vehicle.

Besides their own countries, they have visited Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, from where they have come to India. The India leg of the tour started from Mumbai last week and the second stop was Delhi.

The three-wheeler taxi is fitted with a trailer, where solar cells are installed. It can travel at a maximum speed of 90 km per hour.

In an attempt to popularise the vehicle and the clean-environment cause, Palmer has been offering lifts to passers-by. The vehicle, he said, costs Rs 6 lakh.

“The car runs only on solar power and is emission-free. We want to prove that sustainable technologies are suited for everyday use,” said Palmer, who has got in touch with the West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency (WBREDA) to spread awareness about solar power.

Palmer and his partner met Santipada Ganchowdhury, the WBREDA director, on Sunday and made a brief presentation about their mission and the vehicle.

Following Ganchowdhury’s suggestion, the duo have kept the vehicle at Energy Park, on EM Bypass, so Calcuttans could have a glimpse of it.

The director thinks that solar-powered vehicles are the future of automobile industry. “Some companies are in talks with the duo to use their technology. If more and more vehicles switch to such clean technology, we would surely have a greener environment,” he said.