He fell in love with NZ last week while joining fellow tech investors in a 4x4 road trip from Auckland to Queenstown — without breaking speed records.
Roy, who broke that transcontinental or ‘Cannonball Run’ record in 2006 in 31 hours 4 minutes with co-driver David Maher, says NZ’s "road quality is incredibly good, the scenery is beautiful and it would be a wonderful place to do the things I’ve done in the past, but it would not be a reasonable thing to do now as a parent, as an investor".
"My motivation for visiting NZ was not to misbehave — with one caveat.
"At some point I would like to break the global circumnavigation driving record, which requires stopping in Christchurch, and that does not require breaking the speed record.
"And it would be lots of fun down here to do something in a hybrid or an electric vehicle, and there is a hydrogen start-up here, so it might be cool to do a hydrogen record, which could be at the speed limit or lower."
Roy believes NZ would be "a wonderful place" to have autonomous vehicles or robotaxis, but, having been an autonomous vehicle developer, he says that won’t happen overnight.
After a week in NZ, he’s seen enough to proclaim we’re "probably the best country on earth".
"The only other place that is as unique and fantastic is probably Iceland, and it’s radically different in geography, but the quality of people and the quality of innovators reminds me of Iceland in many ways."
