I love NYTimes op-ed sometimes. After dubbing to Israeli visionary Shai Agassi as “The Jewish Henry Ford” Thomas L. Friedman heaps some well deserved praise for the efforts of “The Jewish Henry Ford” and the Pickens Plan’s efforts to loosen their respective countries from foreign oil dependence.

The only good thing to come from soaring oil prices is that they have spurred innovator/investors, successful in other fields, to move into clean energy with a mad-as-hell, can-do ambition to replace oil with renewable power.

Breifly, Shai Agassi is pushing a innovative electric car opperator network, called Project Better Place. The idea is to offer cheap, mass produced electric cars with a network of recharging outlets and even battery exchanges. Those services will be offered in scaled plans for consumers like your mobile phone company with distance instead of minutes. It’s catching on, Gordon Brown is pledging a few quid to make Britan “the European capital for electric cars.”

What about those of us that live in big countries?

T. Boone and the Pickens Plan, on the other hand, is firing at the same target with different ammunition. He too realizes that America’s $700 billion a year addiction to foreign oil is very large monkey to carry on our backs (it’s late, I can’t stop with the imagery). A nationwide electric car operator network as effective as the one proposed by Shia Agassi’s Project Better Place is just not going be an easy sell. He didn’t become a billionaire by ignoring straight economics in favor of lofty ideals.

In a nutshell, the Pickens Plan aims at adding a ton of energy created by enormous wind farms to electrical power grids. The added wind energy should then allow us to shift our ample natural gas resources away from electricity generation into transportation. Every time I think of Pickens and his plan I picture him smirking as he draws a cigar to his lips with his leather gloved hand and telling the nation how he loves it when a plan comes together.

True, natural gas is a fossil fuel that adds CO2 to the atmosphere, but it’s a lot cleaner and cheaper than gasoline. It’s also not so difficult to have existing cars fitted for CNG, at least not here in Thailand (where I’ve been residing for the last several years).

Here at Replacing Oil we think that hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles are the way forward. However, if I had to choose between the Pickens Plan very likely materializing during the Obama Administration or a hazy hydrogen future (despite it’s obvious posibility), I’ll take the Pickens Plan. He’s got enough money and political attention to nudge the lumbering behemouth that is America’s transportation system in the right directions. Just don’t expect Gordon Brown to discard their blossoming EV ambitions for Wind and Gas. The relationship just isn’t that special anymore.