The Bear Mountain 30 Hybrid Solar Electric boat. [Photo Credit: BearMountainBoats.Com]

As Canadian-based Bear Mountain Boat Shop proved recently, solar energy can be used for more than just cars.

Owner Ted Moores worked together with designers Steve and Jonathan Killing in order to create one of the first solar-based, low-emission recreational cruisers in the world.

The boat (affectionately named “Sparks”) is a 30-foot long hybrid electric cruiser designed in a stylistically vintage manner.

The PlanetSolar boat in Hong Kong recently. [Photo Credit: PlanetSolar.Org]

After nearly a year on the water, the PlanetSolar team has traveled over 22,118 miles and is currently off the coast of Malaysia.

PlanetSolar, as its website states, is “a project for the benefit of our planet.” The effort centers around the worldwide trip of an entirely solar-powered ship, called the TÛRANOR. The trip, they believe, will ultimately demonstrate the capacity of solar energy and will help to bring alternative energy to the world’s attention.

Throughout the expedition (which started in September 2010) a crew of six people has worked to maintain the ship as it aims to sail around the world.

Though hampered by a damaged second module during the first few weeks of September, the crew was able to fight torrential downpours and foggy conditions in order to reach the coast of Vietnam.

Alex Foster takes a spin on a friend's solar-powered tricycle. Foster wants to build a similar solar trike and ride it across America. [Photo Credit: TrektoChangetheWorld.Com]

There are different ways to “bike” across America. You can ride a motorcycle, electric or gasoline powered, or you can provide your own power, as my sister and I did when we bicycled 4,200 miles from Bellingham, Wash. to Yorktown, Virginia in the summer of 1994.

Of course, there are also electric bicycles and, though we don’t know of anyone who’s ridden an electric bicycle across America, I’m sure it’s been done.

But a solar-powered bicycle – now, as far as we know, that is something new. And it’s Alex Foster’s chosen cross-country mode of transportation.

The Georgia Tech University Solar Jackets' solar-assisted Audi. [Photo Credit: SolarJackets.GeorgiaTech.Edu]

Here’s a really cool looking car (see picture above) – and it’s not just the solar cells on the outside, but also what’s on the inside – the car is electric – that makes it so cool.

The Georgia Tech Solar Jackets modified this Audi sports car to run partially on electricity generated by the solar cells integrated into its body, though an electric motor primarily powers this “solar assisted” EV Audi.