Bye bye, gasoline?

Which do you prefer?

• Feed mid-east terrorism or mid-west farmers?
• Import expensive gasoline or use cheaper ethanol?
• Create farm jobs or mid-east oil tycoons?
• Fossil fuels or green fuels?
• ANWR oil rigs or "prairie grass" fields?
• Gasoline cars or cars with fuel choices?

This is a slide from the presentation by Vinod Khosla, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems. His VC is backing the development of replacing gasoline with ethanol.

The case for ethanol is compelling. It's cheaper, it's cleaner, it reduces our dependence on mid-east, it helps the farmers and thus helps reduce the need for agricultural subsidy, which is a rather explosive issue, as every Hong Kong-er can tell you, and, requiring no technological breakthrough, it's cheap to get started. Simply put, there's something for everyone except oil companies that do not embrace it.

Best of all, it's been proven plausible. In Brazil, driven only by consumer demand with no government subsidy, the share of ethanol-friendly cars (called "Flex-fuel vehicles") in car sales rose from 4% to 70%. And Brazil is already enjoying all the benefits mentioned above. All in three-year time.

The presentation is available here. It's one of the talks hosted at Googleplex. You can download it for your PC, iPod or PSP.