Gates doesn’t appear to be a fan of Tesla vehicles, and he’s said as much publicly.
In February 2020, Gates said during an interview with the YouTuber Marques Brownlee that while Tesla had helped to drive innovation and adoption of electric vehicles, he recently bought a Porsche Taycan.
In September, Musk tweeted that Gates had “no clue” about electric trucks.
In August, Gates wrote a blog post about electric vehicles that questioned whether it was practical to make vehicles like 18-wheelers fully electric.
Though he didn’t mention Tesla, the company does produce a semi.
A few weeks later, a Twitter user asked Musk about his opinion of Gates’ comments, to which Musk replied, “He has no clue.”
Musk called Gates a “knucklehead” for criticizing his coronavirus efforts.
During a podcast interview published in September, The New York Times’ Kara Swisher asked Musk about his feelings about the virus, including whether he planned to get vaccinated.
Musk defended himself against Gates’ comments, saying he’d spent time with Harvard University epidemiologists “doing antibody studies” and noting Tesla’s work with CureVac.
“Gates said something about me not knowing what I was doing,” Musk told Swisher. “It’s like, ‘Hey, knucklehead, we actually make the vaccine machines for CureVac, that company you’re invested in.'”
In November, Musk surpassed Gates as the world’s second-richest person. Since then, he and Jeff Bezos have flip-flopped as the world’s richest. His net worth currently stands at $174 billion.
Source: Markets Insider, Bloomberg
Gates recently made a jab at Musk’s focus on rockets, but did issue him a rare compliment.
During an appearance on Kara Swisher’s “Sway” podcast in February, Gates said he’s not interested in pouring his money into outer space projects like his fellow billionaires, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
“No, I’m not a Mars person. I know a lot of Mars people,” Gates said. “I don’t think rockets are the solution. But maybe I’m missing something there.”
He went on to say that he’d rather spend his money on vaccines here on Earth than on space travel.
But Gates did issue a rare compliment to Musk, calling what Musk has accomplished with Tesla “one of the greatest contributions to climate change anyone’s ever made.”
“Underestimating Elon is not a good idea,” he said.
Gates has also taken issue with the mania surrounding cryptocurrencies, which Musk has helped fuel online.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Gates shared his thoughts on cryptocurrencies.
He noted how much energy bitcoin uses, making it not very environmentally friendly. He also warned investors not to dump money into bitcoin like Tesla has.
“Elon has tons of money and he’s very sophisticated, so I don’t worry that his Bitcoin will sort of randomly go up or down,” Gates told Bloomberg.
“I do think people get bought into these manias, who may not have as much money to spare, so I’m not bullish on Bitcoin, and my general thought would be that, if you have less money than Elon, you should probably watch out,” he said.