Bill Gates says electric cars are ‘far easier’ than other climate change technology

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates doesn’t think it’s fair to refer to Tesla CEO Elon Musk as “the next Steve Jobs,” the billionaire philanthropist said during an interview on Bloomberg TV.

When asked by Bloomberg‘s correspondent Erik Schatzker if Musk was indeed the next Jobs, Gates answered: “If you know people personally, that kind of gross oversimplification seems strange. Elon’s more of a hands-on engineer; Steve was a genius at design and picking people and marketing. You couldn’t walk into a room and confuse them with each other.”

Gates said he has tremendous respect for Musk and praised the American electric automaker’s product, but also said, “the difficulty on the other areas [of the battle against climate change] is much higher. I’m not trivializing in any way the need to raise the market share of [electric vehicles], but on a relative basis, that’s far easier than the industrial economy where our progress is very, very small.”

Tesla shares have increased in recent times, tripling Musk’s net worth as well, making him the third richest person in the world.

Gates refused to discuss whether Tesla’s stock is overvalued, saying “the questions of what’s the proper per car and what’s the market share of Tesla — that’s for stock people, that’s not a climate change issue at all”.

Gates’ comments are not surprising. They are the latest in a series of digs the two billionaires which they have taken at each over the past six months, including when Musk tweeted that his conversations with Gates have been “underwhelming” and Gates said Musk’s “positioning is to maintain a high level of outrageous comments”.