A while ago I wrote briefly on why the Singularity might not be near and my estimates badly off. I saw it linked the other day, and realized that pessimism seemed to be trendy lately, which meant I ought to work on why one might be optimistic instead: http://www.gwern.net/Mistakes#counter-point
(Summary: long-sought AI goals have been recently achieved, global economic growth & political stability continues, and some resource crunches have turned into surpluses - all contrary to long-standing pessimistic forecasts.)
BOS costs have so far kept rough pace with cell costs, and the DOE has fairly credible roadmaps and prototypes for further reductions, as with cells. Part of these are regulatory costs (pointless permitting demands and the like) which can be relaxed, and have been in places like Germany.