That number is useless unless you also define the amount of time as well.

For example - On one acre one can install about 750 kW worth of solar on an acre. The US ranges from about 5-8 kWh of sun a day depending on where you live, so that 750 kW solar farm will produce anywhere from 3.7 MWh to 6 MWh a day. That's about enough for 100-200 households depending on the house. It's also good for about 11,000 - 18,000 electric vehicle miles / day assuming your EV uses 1 kWh to go 3 miles.

How does biofuel from algae compare to that?

You are mixing up refined petroleum products and crude oil. As you can see by our net exports of refined products, we currently have excess refinery capacity.

We consume about 20 million barrels of crude oil a day in the USA. About half of that is imported (~9M barrels/day in Sept 2011). The top 5 countries we import oil from are Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria in that order which account for about 70% of our oil imports.

ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

The ~60 million barrels of petroleum products we exported the first 9 months of 2011 represent about a weeks worth of oil imports. Not even close to being a net exporter of oil.

Huh? 1 kW is 1.36 HP. So 350 kWh would be 476 HPh.

This is besides the point, but it depends on the size and aerodynamics of the car, but 60 HP will get you right around 100 mph.

No, the power required to travel 50 mph is a fraction of the power required to travel 50 mph thanks to the exponential effects of aerodynamic drag. If we assume 60 HP to travel 100 mph, it takes less than 15 HP to travel 50 mph.

Let's assume it takes 15 HP or 11 kW to maintain 50 mph and you want to drive 1000 miles.

That will take 20 hours and use 220 kWh (20h * 11kW) over that period of time.

To drive your typical car 1000 miles you need about 250-350 kWh. Which is anywhere from one half to one quarter your typical household's monthly usage.

Never mind that 98% of the time you will charge your EV at night or whenever there is excess generation capacity because the utility company will happily charge you lower rates to do so. A very large portion of our vehicle fleet could be electrified without adding any additional generation capacity.

When on average about 2/3rds of the energy we use is thrown away as waste heat before we can actually use it (never mind that ultimately ALL energy we use ends up as heat), there's plenty of room for reductions in energy use through efficiency.

What does refining capacity have to do with energy independence?

Never mind that refineries are shutting down because of low utilization rates and cut-throat competition (IE big refineries buying out small refineries and shutting them down to raise profits). A significant portion of our refining capacity is currently used to export finished oil products.

There isn't anywhere close to enough oil in the USA that can be pulled out of the ground fast enough to satisfy our oil demands (oil is the biggest contributor to energy dependence on foreign countries).

The only way to achieve energy dependence is to cut oil demand in half through a combination of efficiency and moving oil powered transport onto other fuels through electrification of the motor vehicle fleet where it makes sense.

At which point we'll have an even bigger surplus of refining capacity.

Implying that SSDs are equal because they use the same controller is like saying a Apple iMac and a Dell are the same because they use the same CPU.

The firmware that runs on the SSD is highly unlikely to be the same on Intel branded drives compared to OCZ branded drives. And firmware is what is a leading cause of reliability issues on SSDs.

I don't believe that Coda has received any federal money.

You are correct. Nissan got a DOE grant to build a large battery manufacturing plant there in Tennessee. The 2013 LEAF will be produced there and will have a very high domestic content label. Probably not as good as the Camry which has had the highest domestic content for a number of years. But it will be a lot better than the basically 100% foreign LEAF now. It will probably be better than the Chevy Volt which gets it's batteries from Korea.

I'd wager that the LEAF will be the most "American" EV on the market for model year 2013 unless a domestic manufacturer builds an EV using A123 batteries (GM may be closest to doing this, I think).

Just how long is your commute and poorly timed are your traffic lights that you can cut 5 min/day from your commute by stomping the gas?

Unless on the freeway, I find that the majority of the time I catch up to the guy "stomping the gas" at the next light because he's had to stomp the brakes at the next red light.

And are you really finding that 5 minutes noticable?

Personally, I find that many people turn into arrogant, self-serving, aggressive douche-bags when behind the wheel of a 2-ton automobile. And they'll use any excuse to blame that behavior on something else when driving aggressively is clearly linked to increased accident risk. (and yes, scientific studies back this up)