The energy that is present in the gasoline in your automobile's fuel tank is a. potential energy b. nuclear energy c. kinetic energy d. thermal energy

A. potential energy.
It can't be any of the above questions. When the automobile burns gas it converts the potential energy into chemical energy which intern gets converted into mechanical energy and then into kinetic energy.

I would have thought it would be Chemical potential energy, which is referring to the energy between the bonds in the molecule.
Hoped this helped.