Gates' New Ride
Bill Gates is known for his minor love of cars. There's a fairly famous story from the late '80s when Gates bought a Porsche 959, at the time the most sophisticated Porsche on the market. These cars were so rare and so expensive that Porsche had to sacrifice one to a U.S. crash test, which meant that Bill couldn't register his quarter-million-dollar machine.
Bill's new love is even more high-tech, and it hasn't even been built yet. Gates, along with partners, has a patent for an electromagnetic engine driven by particle beams. The engine has pistons just like the six in his Porsche 959, but the pistons create electrical energy rather than directly driving a crank.
Posted by Doug Barney on June 26, 2009