Touring India In A Self-Made Solar Car — 63-Year-Old Looking To Cover 1,740 Kilometers

A 63-year-old man by the name of Syed Sajjad Ahmed is planning to make an incredible 1,740-kilometer (~1080-mile) journey from Bengaluru to Delhi, India, in a self-made solar-powered vehicle over the coming months, according to recent reports.

The exact journey that the Kolar native will make will be from Raj Bhavan in Bengaluru, to Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi. The trip will go through “Hindupur, Ananthpur, Kurnool, Mahaboobnagar, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Itarsi, Jhansi and Agra.”

The plan is apparently for Syed to arrive in Delhi just in time for the India International Science Fair, which is set to begin in early December.

Interestingly, Syed Sajjad Ahmed is a dropout, and simply built the solar vehicle out of sheer passion — and also apparently from the desire to be an instrument of social change/awareness.

ET Auto provides more information:

Syed started selling fruits to eke out a living 20 years ago, and gradually built a shop where he repaired radio and televisions. Soon he took to making television antenna and in 2002, he designed a two-wheeler. Syed’s experiments did not stop there; he designed a solar-powered car in 2004.

He certainly sounds like an interesting person, doesn’t he? That kind of personal passion has almost always been the driver of real change — here’s to hoping that his message is well received.

“The solar car has been my chariot to Chennai, Kochi, and Kanyakumari. Now, it will run up to 100 kilometers (~62 miles) every day. The Delhi trip will be a tribute to my hero Dr APJ Abdul Kalam who had inspired me to make my dream a reality,” commented Syed.

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