Jay Leno, arguably one of the most famous gearheads in the world, praised Tesla’s reliability and said that he now sees electric cars as ‘the future’.

After leaving the Tonight Show, Leno focused on his love of cars and made a show, Leno’s Garage, out of his impressive garage in Los Angeles, where he keeps his car collection and work on and restore older cars.

The show was eventually picked up by CNBC.

Leno was interviewed by the network this week for the new season coming up.

During the interview, Leno, who has been a Tesla owner for the past 3 years, praised Tesla for its reliability:

“I have a Tesla. I’ve had it for three years. I’ve never done anything. There’s no fluids to change. There’s nothing.”

Electric cars, like Tesla’s, virtually have no regular maintenance and while some cars had reliability issues, there are far fewer moving parts in an electric car’s powertrain than in a gas-powered car, which results in a higher potential for long-term reliability.

Leno believes that “electric cars are the future”. He added:

“Steam ran everything from 1800 to about 1911. Then internal combustion took over from 1911 to right about now. And I predict that a child born today probably has as much chance of driving in a gas car as people today have been driving a car with a stick shift,”

The show host credits Tesla for pushing the technology to a higher level over the internal combustion engine.

He continued:

“For new technology to succeed, it can’t be equal. It’s got to be better and [Tesla] sort of solved the battery problem. It can go 350 to 400 miles at a charge. … There’s no maintenance. They’re faster than the gas car. So there’s almost no reason to have a gas car unless you’re doing long-haul duty.”

Leno owns a Model S and he has taken an interest in other Tesla vehicles in the past. He got a rare look at Tesla’s next-gen Roadster prototype last year.

Here’s the full interview with Jay Leno:

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