I spend 5 seconds plugging in my car when I get home and 5 seconds unplugging in the morning. I spend far less time than I spent filling my gas car up where I'd have to go out of my way to a gas station, wait in line and fill up. Yes, there's a bit of a wait on long trips, but for most of my driving I spend far less time. When battery swapping is available it will take me roughly 90 seconds without me ever having to step out of my car (and for those who don't know, battery swapping includes getting your original battery back on the return trip).

Good luck with that. The current batch of republicans have been the least productive house in the history.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://www.nytimes.com/politic...
http://www.eclectablog.com/201...

And how many of these require congress? The executive's job is to execute the laws. He can pass or veto a bill but he can't write them. He can choose how to execute the law, what laws to prioritize or not but his power is limited.

This is especially true for anything tax or budget related. All spending bills must originate in the house. Ever since he swore the oath of office the Republicans have bent over backwards with fillibuster threats for just about everything, even the stuff they wanted. The healthcare law only passed because there was only a brief window when democrats had a fillibuster-proof majority.

A bipartisan comprehensive immigration bill was passed ages ago in the Senate but what has the republican-led house done on it? Absolutely nothing.

It also doesn't help that a huge percentage of department heads have been blocked because Republicans have used the fillibuster to block many of these appointments, many since Obama began his first term.

The republicans have been up in arms and done everything to prevent him from doing his job out of spite, making constant racist comments about his birth, or that he's Muslim, etc. etc with Fox News blowing the horn for them with crazy conspiracy theories.

The republicans blame the president about illegals and children crossing the border. The border control says they need more agents and more money to better control the problem. The president says to provide more money. The republicans say no more money and continue to blame the president for something that needs funding which must originate in the republican dominated house.

They also are making a fair amount of revenue selling services. For example, my employer had so many problems with Microsoft Sharepoint that they switched to Google Drive. I use both Google and Microsoft's services. Microsoft's (at least Email) leaves a lot to be desired.

Google is also in the transaction business like Paypal and Amazon as well as hosting services.

For another organization I'm looking into Google services now to handle documents and email.

It comes from fission. All that U235 splits into other elements, which then split further down the line.

Solar cells do not use mirrors unless you're Solyndra. Anyway, the amount of silver is fairly low since only a very thin layer is required.

There are a lot of other costs involved with coal. Unlike China, the US requires scrubbers on all of the smoke stacks, then there's the storage of all of the ash left over, transportation costs for the coal, etc. That's why natural gas is overtaking coal. You just shove natural gas into a pipe and pull it out the other end. No long line of train cars, no scrubbers, no ash to deal with.

Your link is outdated and only considers a limited number of battery technologies, i.e. lead acid. There are many promising grid storage type batteries that are cheap and can handle far more cycles with greater energy density, such as liquid metal and liquid salt batteries. For areas with hydroelectric power there's pumped storage which is around 70% efficient. With pumped storage when there's excess supply water is pumped back into the resivoir. There's also flywheel storage, compressed air, molten salt, gravitational potential energy and many other storage methods. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage.

You also must take into account the electricity being pumped back into the grid during times of peak demand. It's helping reduce the utility's non base-load generation which is generally quite expensive compared to the base load generation.

It makes me glad that in my state they have added rules limiting stupid things HOAs try and do. HOAs cannot prevent solar from being installed and they must allow EV charging to be installed. The latest HOA laws prevent HOAs from requiring residents to water or prevent from putting in plants that require little water... we're in a major drought and some HOAs tried to fine people who wouldn't water their lawns or who put in low-water plants.

Thankfully I don't have to deal with an HOA.

They already had one hydrogen fire at the hydrogen fueling station in my county for the county fuel-cell powered buses, and this isn't some place where idiot joe public can fill up their car.

The problem is that it takes a horrendous amount of electricity for electrolysis compared to steam reforming and it is far far more expensive, that's even with the catalysts available. 95% of all commercial hydrogen produced uses steam reformed natural gas. The cost difference is very significant.

Unlike EVs a lot more public refueling stations are required. For example with my Tesla I do most of my charging at home overnight where it takes me 5 seconds to plug in and 5 seconds to unplug. The rapid charging stations and battery swap stations (when they're built) are only needed for long trips. For HFC vehicles a lot more filling stations will be required since most people will not be filling up at home or work. Many companies (though not mine) offer EV charging stations to their employees so they can charge their cars while they work. For people who live in apartment complexes it is a bit more complicated, but as time goes on they'll start installing charging stations there for their tenants, in fact this is already happening.

A hydrogen filling station costs far far more than an EV charging station, anywhere from 500K to 5 million. It's estimated that Tesla pays around $100-200K for their supercharger stations which are generally only needed for long distance travel. Slower commercial charging stations cost a few thousand dollars. The cost of the charging stations is also dropping. An EV charging station can be built any place there's electricity. I have a coworker who just uses a regular 120v outlet to charge her Leaf. In my case I can charge just about anywhere. I can charge at most RV parks though it's a lot slower than the supercharger stations.

Most drivers in SV do 10-15 _over_ the speed limit when traffic is open. Elderly generally stay off the freeways except on Sunday... Sunday drivers tend to be slow road boulders.

Silicon Valley weathered the 2008 bubble better than most of the country and bounced back very quickly. Unemployment is quite low and there are a lot of new tech companies going in. Currently things are far more diverse than they were when the dot com bubble burst.

Part of it is the whole environment of Silicon Valley which is not easy to duplicate. Silicon Valley rewards failure. If your last two startup ventures failed, you're more likely to get support for a new one. People also hop from company to company if they're not happy, and the California making non-compete clauses irrelevant has helped a lot. The weather is quite nice though rain would be quite welcome after two years of severe drought. We may get a few hot days in the summer but it's usually a dry heat and it cools off after a few days. The winter rarely gets below freezing. And as a software engineer, it's an engineer's market. If I'm not happy I can just go across the street and work someplace else and the employers know it. Also, the social services here have not been cut nearly as much as in many red states. That isn't to say that there aren't problems, like bad traffic and high housing costs, much of which is due to the demand greatly exceeding supply. There's not much room to build more housing either since Silicon Valley is surrounded by hills.

The state's financial situation recovered much faster than many other states and has had a balanced budget the last few years. Once we got rid of all the gerrymandering the state has been balancing its budget with minimal fuss since the current voting laws promote moderate candidates.