IMHO, he's a businessman retired to being a philanthropist and has certainly done more to
save the world than I have. He started and donates to the Gates foundation who's mission is to
help all people lead healthy, productive lives. They have many very smart people trying to figure out how to make the biggest impacts and has saved over 122 million lives [
ref1,
ref2]. It's divided into:
Global Health - Working to eradicate diseases like malaria
Global Development - Resolving the inequity across the world
Global Growth - Promote products and policies that break down barriers to economic development
US Division - ensuring that all students graduate from high school prepared for college and have an opportunity to earn a post secondary degree with labor-market value.
Global Policy & Advocacy Division - build strategic alliances with governments and the public and private sectors, and foster greater public awareness of urgent global issues.
Like many political figures, he is frequently misquoted. For example,
@Steve_S wrote:
...And he says that Electric Transport Trucks will never work....
Where what he actually said (
ref) is talking about the
economics rather than the
engineering:
...Even with big breakthroughs in battery technology, electric vehicles will probably never be a practical solution for things like 18-wheelers ... This is where cheap alternative [biofuels] fuels come in....
To an extent, he's right in that biofuels are lighter and have a higher energy denser than batteries and easily refueled. It is a cheaper entry solution than an electric vehicle.
The Tesla argument [
ref] isn't that biofuels aren't economical replacements for diesel. It's that an electric 18 wheeler has an enormous advantage in:
- Reliability (mechanical up-time, breaking recovers energy and break pads rarely need replacing),
- Decreased transit time lost from poor speeds/acceleration,
- Without gear shifting can have a simpler auto-navigation
- Safer as issues like jack-knifing are reduced with with four computer controlled independent motors.
All of those things reduce the cost of ownership under the fuel price; their engineering is to reduce the per mile cost under that of a conventional diesel. Then they add in their truck-convoy technology and they predict their costs are half that of a diesel, even cheaper than rail.