YouTuber Marques Brownlee has again sat down with one of the biggest personalities in the tech industry, co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates.
Given Gates mostly focuses on his work on the Foundation to help benefit the world, it wasn’t surprising to see the topic of electric cars come up again in the interview.
Gates revealed that he has recently bought a Porsche Taycan. The Taycan is an interesting choice for the second richest person on the planet. The Taycan’s top model, the Turbo S is estimated to be around A$200,00 when it comes to Aus later this year. It features an impressive 0-100km time of just 2.8 seconds. The range is somewhere between 388 and 412km according to the WLTP standard.
Gates already has a seriously impressive car collection, however selecting an EV as his latest purchase says something important about the current state of the electric market.
EVs are available for purchase, mostly at the premium end of the price range. When discussing the future of electric vehicles, Gates highlights that basically every automaker is working hard to bring EVs to market.
It is interesting to hear his comments about EVs are range, especially given the car he’s chosen, is far short of the industry’s best, the Tesla Model S long-range is capable of 713km range (NEDC).
The profile of driving in America is not too different from that of Australia. A vast distance from one side of the country to the other and often family or tourist destinations means a lot of driving. With a combination of the right battery size, efficiency and recharging infrastructure, this is a perfectly solvable problem and one that is achievable today, if you choose the right car.
I can’t imagine Gates is doing many cross-country road trips, so range and price are clearly not problems he shares personally, but to move a generation of people forward and grow the EV market from 3% globally, it is worth talking about solutions.
Gates raises an important point when it comes to the transition away from fossil fuels. He explains that it’s not enough to just target passenger cars, but you also have to do industrial and agriculture.
While Tesla has a fairly strong grip on the consumer market for EVs, they’ve shown no sign of turning their attention to the other two, big, possible less sexy markets.
The full interview is available below and well worth 12 minutes of your time.
