I do not think that hence the word "most" in my statement. The main difference between cabs and restaurants is that it is very difficult for one company to run a thousand restaurants on a city but it is quite common for a cab company in a big city to have a thousand cabs.

Hence the word "most" in my statement.

It is also for shifting supply to demand. When supply is higher than demand the excess electricity is stored by pumping water. When demand is higher than supply the water is run through the turbines to meet the demand.

If there is more demand for 50GW and only 25GW can be produced then there is a problem. If the reservoirs are dry because they have been used there is a problem. Therefore capacity and amount of electricity produced is very important.

The article contents that all electricity need for California can be fulfilled by solar power. They do not differentiate between daytime demand and nighttime demand. They make no reference to and difficulties in integrating large amounts of solar into the grid.

Let me fix that for you

Take a look at any production graph in this report. Notice that at all time there is a significant amount of conventional production. The article contends that all daytime demand can be fulfilled by solar. At no time Germany does 100% of electricity come from solar/wind therefore Germany has never had to ramp up or down as fast as necessary if solar fulfilled day demand. Germany is not an counterexample as the scenario is very different.

The headline states the following;

Then you state;

Since five times is much more than 100% I don't see how you could have read the headline and made that statement.

Yes I am arguing stuff not in the article because the article does not show the whole picture. That causes solar to appear to be a simpler solution than it really is.

It is my contention that the focus on large production number for solar is hiding the real issue with integrating solar into the grid which is storage. Is solar useless? No. Does high solar production need storage to shift supply to demand? Yes.

While the road itself has not been touched the road was scanned by a special vehicle and the data gone over by a person to highlight specific attributes of the road. Traffic lights are specifically located so the car knows where to look for the signal. Stationary objects on the side of the road are flagged as such. In effect the Google Car is restricted to roads that have been analyzed recently. There is a lot of human interaction with the maps to allow the cars to drive. Most of that 350,000 miles is Google employees commuting over the same roads.

Since the driver takes over in difficult situations that "without accident" stat is skewed.

There is one thing that Google never tells us; How many times the driver had to take over because the AI could not handle the situation. The Google car is not completely self driving as the driver takes over sometimes. It will not be self driving until the driver never has to touch the wheel. We are far from that.

If Uber is so profitable for drivers then why are some Uber drivers striking over wages/working conditions?

Are self driving cars the future of transportation? Yes. The only question is how far in the future. Current technology can do many of the tasks of driving a car very well. Lane following is a good example of that. They also do many tasks very poorly. Differentiating someone waving hello from someone trying to warn you of danger is an example. To do the more complex tasks requires great leaps in AI. When will these advances happen? I think it will take at least a few decades. Ever heard of the 80/20 rule? In this case 80% of the challenges can be solved with 20% of the effort. That last 20% is going to take 80% of the effort.

If you hire a guy to keep building fences for the foreseeable future he is an employee and not a contractor. Building a single fence is a discrete job. It has a definable start and end. When the job is over the contract is over. Driving for Uber is indeterminate as it has not defined end.

The quote about tools is incomplete. Here is the rest of it.

You completely ignore the fact that Uber controls who they pick up. Uber drivers are not allowed to work for Lyft while working for Uber and are not allowed to pick up street fares.

A driver who is in his vehicle 10 hours a day five days a week picking up only Uber dispatched calls and who's only source of income is Uber is an Uber employee. Are all Uber drivers employees? Probably not. Are some Uber drivers Uber employees? Definitely.

Uber does not want them designated as employees as they would have to give them things like holiday pay, minimum wage, EI payments, etc.

Portmout, NH sa one Uber driver. The taxi business in a town of 20,000 is very different that in a city of 20,000,000.

Take a look at this article. While many points are driver issues there are a significant number that are company issues that the CEO is responsible for. Some of those are "surge pricing", cancelling fares on competitors, high fees/low fares, poor background checks, privacy issues, muck raking journalists, etc.

Taxis in most cities are oligopolies in that the business is controlled by a few companies. The reason oligopolies are created is that they are compensation for requirements put on them by the government. Here are a few examples of what taxi companies are required to do or have that Uber is not.
1. Commercial licenses for drivers.
2. Minimum number of cars on the road
3. Vehicle inspections
4. Insurance requirements.
5. Minimum wage for drivers
6. Minimum number of handicap accessible vehicles.
7. Requirement to pick up anyone regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
8. Set rate fares
9. Background checks
10. Accountability for drivers' actions (Uber just throws their hands in the air and says "they are a contractor I have no control" while taxi companies get fined)
11. Governance by a taxi board who decides on fines for poor service.
The laws for taxis have grown through the years and no jurisdiction in their right mind would want to go back to the days of no taxi regulations.

If Uber is allowed to flourish they may drive conventional taxis out of business. When the fad of driving for Uber fades we will be in a much worse situation.

But they can not take other fares than from Uber.

They also use Uber servers and software to receive dispatches.

So does anyone doing commissioned sales.
It is a grey area and depends on how one looks at it.

Tesla is actually following or fighting the dealership laws. They do not have dealerships in States that do not allow them. Another difference is scale. Tesla may have one dealership in a city while Uber could have hundreds of drivers.

The problem was that the driver provided a false criminal records check and Uber did not verify it's authenticity. It is weel know that many criminal records checks are forged in India. Had they done the check they would have found it false and not allowed him to drive.