We had them in the New York City schools. We also took cover under our desks. Absolutely ridiculous. The outside wall of the room was a series of very tall windows, running most of the length of the room. In a nuclear attack, even miles away, we all would have been killed by flying glass.

As far as technology changes goes, there are two kinds. One is software, and the other is hardware. I bought my car in March of 2021. Tesla has provided frequent downloads of software upgrades that range from bug fixes to turn on of major additional features, such as making the blind spot cameras available in conjunction with the turn signals and green light detection. The computer in the car is sufficiently capable of accepting the updates offered so far. It even has the capability for the (G-d forbid) full self driving option. Hardware upgrades, obviously, don't happen on already existing models. They also are infrequent. Basically, the car stays current until a major hardware upgrade takes place. Some are planned for the model Y, but they are not earth shattering, so I am not really concerned about the upcoming changes. Over the long haul, yes, the technology will change, but unless the lease is for a long time, it is unlikely that the hardware will change enough to make a difference. In fact, the way Tesla makes changes by phasing them in to current production, the buyer doesn't know if a certain change is present in his/her particular vehicle until after purchase. In theory you could be leasing the last vehicle manufactured before a significant hardware change.

Interesting point about the birds possibly not seeing the blades. My first thought is they get sucked into the blades, but then seeing how slowly the blades turn, I think you are right.

The problem of bird kills also affects some solar plants. Most of us recognize the plants that are rows and rows of solar cells that seem to go on for miles. These don't kill birds. There is a type of thermal solar plant that uses mirrors to focus the sun's rays on a boiler mounted on a tower to produce tremendous amounts of heat to boil water to make steam for turbine electrical generators. You can recognize them by their semicircular rows of mirrors. The heat between the mirrors and the boiler is so intense that it cooks the birds on the fly.

Production of natural gas releases large amounts of methane into the atmosphere, both at the well head and during transmission.

I don't know about being lucky to have a nuke in my backyard. When I lived on Long Island, I had the Shoreham plant 13 miles away. It was a total disaster. Luckily, it was dismantled before delivering it's first kW of power. The project, well behind schedule and monstrously over budget, was mismanaged from day one. Corners were being cut and numerous coverups of errors and defects were found during government inspection. Company management, knowing full well that they were not going to get an operating license, ran a test which contaminated the reactor, driving the cost of dismantling up by orders of magnitude. Fortunately, Palo Verde is quite the opposite. It is the largest in the country and well run. It supplies power to AZ, CA and NV.

It is highly unlikely that many nukes will be built. Aside from the cost and time it takes to build them, there is a justifiable fear associated with them. I am aware that there is a new design type that is self limiting, and "cannot" run away, but that fact will get buried in the noise when an application for such a plant is made.

Why would you assume that just because we live in the desert that no one cares if we build wind or solar farms? The desert is far from a wasteland. It has an amazing ecology and stunning beauty. Every application for solar or wind get the same amount of opposition as an application in any other place.

As EVs propagate, there will be less need for gasoline, and fewer places to buy it. You might even need an app to find your nearest gas station. That will drive the prices up. You might even have a problem finding a place to repair your car. With fewer gas cars on the road, there will be fewer places to service them.

Before you point out the expense of battery replacement, I will tell you that the battery warranty on my car is that the battery will retain greater than 70% of capacity for 8 years and 120,000 miles. Most of the older Teslas on the road have passed 150,000 miles and still retain high capacity. By the time 8 years go by, I will probably want a new car, if for no other reason than taking advantage of technology advances beyond those that Tesla now downloads to us periodically.

Granted. As more wind and solar come on line, that will decrease, too. This is not going to happen overnight, but t is happening now.

It depends on where you are. AZ has a large solar component in it's toolbox of power sources, and also we have a very large Nuke (Palo Verde). Most of the remainder come from natural gas, hydroelectric (for the immediate future) and a small, and decreasing portion from coal.

Natural gas is not environmentally friendly, it is methane, which is a really bad greenhouse gas. The best that can be said about it, is that it burns more cleanly than coal or oil. I have not seen a fueling station along I-10, I-17 or I-8 that supplies natural gas. The Department of Energy has a website that shows the location of every fueling station, for every kind of fuel.

The environmental benefits from EVs come on slowly. As more EVs are on the road, the amount of greenhouse tailpipe emissions decrease. I didn't buy the car because I felt a burning need to buy an environmentally sound vehicle, I bought it because I needed a new car and didn't want to invest in a car that was going to see increasing fuel costs a few years out.

A bit of information about diesel generators. A diesel generator would not be a good choice for something like a Supercharger station. Diesel generators operate best when connected to more or less constant loads. That is why the power companies use them to supply base load. The Supercharger stations have very uneven loads. There might be no cars, or there might be ten or twenty. Each car will have it's own charging curve, depending upon how full the battery is. When the charger starts up on a low battery, the charge rate is very high. It falls off rapidly after a short time. When the battery gets over 80%, the charge rate slows down. This is a very uneven load, and unsuitable for a diesel generator.

The voltage that comes from the transformer is split phase 220. The two lines are 180° out of phase with respect to the ground line. Each will measure 110 with respect to ground and 220 between the lines. I also know Ohm's Law, I got my EE Degree in 1967.

Your EV conversion sounds interesting. How are you going to control the motor? Is it an AC or DC motor? The Tesla uses one of each.

I slightly misrepresented the Tesla charging system. It will supply up to 48 amps, but I can use the app in the car or on my phone, and set it at any level up to the max. The same for the charging time. I can set it to start any time, or even, if I have a departure time, and I set the car up to charge, it will charge by the departure time.

I have no experience on the Mach E. The Teslas use air cooled motors, and the only coolant is used for the battery. By Tesla's own statement that coolant does not have to be changed.

Two wires on the pole sounds like 120V. It could be higher if there is a transformer feeding the line to your house.

Unless you want to install a Supercharger ($$$$$$$$$$$$$), there is no need to have three phase power. The level 2 home chargers attach to normal 220 volt lines, with your charge rate a function of the maximum current that your line provides. The maximum for the Tesla is 48 amps, for which you need a 60 amp line. Some chargers can plug into 30 amp dryer outlets or T-50 outlets. The Tesla comes with a portable charger that works on 120 volts, but only adds 2-4 miles per hour. Adapters for the various 220 volt outlet styles are inexpensive, and with a T-50 outlet, allow for the addition of around 39 miles per hour. I plan to buy such an adapter for T-50 outlets because I have found that many RV camps have those connections. That would extend the area where the car could be used without having to bite my nails looking for a compatible charger. That adapter costs about $35.

I have seen in the news that Musk plans to open the Tesla network to other vehicles. It is not clear how he is going to do this, since the power connector on the charger is different from the CCS connector that many other cars use. There must be something to this because I did notice the other day that the Tesla phone app has added the ability for non members to sign up to use the network. There is a choice for pay as you go, or monthly membership with lower rates than pay as you go. Teslas are able to use other networks, as there are already adapters to convert the Tesla connector to CCS.

I have never seen a fenced area near a charging station. The service is underground, which is the wiring method at every Tesla Supercharger I have used. There are large cabinets that must contain transformers because of the hum level that can be heard a few feet away. I think the distribution to these cabinets would be 3 phase, 440 or higher, and the transformers are used to convert to single phase power, and if the voltage is higher, then they reduce it to 440. The rectifiers must also be present in the cabinets because the Supercharger is a DC charger. The Tesla battery is nominally a 360 volt battery, so 440 volts is appropriate for the charger.

These are charge times at the Tesla Supercharger. That makes them quick charges.

How much time do I waste in a month waiting for my car to charge up? Usually none. You don't need to run the car down to empty before you charge it. If I know that I am not going to use the car in the morning, I will plug it in and take advantage of $0.03 per kWh super off peak electric rates. The car lets me know when it is finished, or if I decide to use it, I just stop the charger. If I am going to use the car in the morning, and I think that I need to charge, I plug it in, and at 7:00 pm, when the off peak hours start, the car starts to charge. Depending on how low the battery is, I might be asleep when it finishes.

The only time I use the Supercharger is on long road trips. We make a trip from Scottsdale to various places in CA several times a year. I start with the car at 100% from charging overnight. For trips to SoCal, two charging stops along the way, 20 or 25 minutes each. Don't charge to 100%. Those are pit stops. When I drove my ICE Altima for the same trip we made one pit stop, so the difference in wasted time is minutes.

The only time it takes hours to charge the battery is when it is really low, and that is done at home when we are sleeping. Not much wasted time after all.

There seems to be a misunderstanding about charging on the road. If your battery is down below 10% (a really bad idea) and you want to charge to 100%, it will take an hour to an hour and a quarter. On the other hand, arriving at the charger with 20% and charging to 70% takes about 20 minutes. Yes, longer than a gas fill up, but there is always the pit stop to consider.

The heat for heating the car doesn't come from the motors. In the Model Y it comes from a heat pump. The heated seats and the heated steering wheel are very decadent. They also let you turn down the heat, and save some battery power.

No oil "wanders through the engine." The motors are sealed, and air cooled. Coolant is use to keep the battery temperature down, and also to heat the battery under cold conditions. The battery coolant does not need to be changed. As far as I can remember, the only fluids that need attention are the windshield wiper fluid, and the brake fluid.

There are no diesel generators at the Supercharger Stations. Many of them are in shopping centers. The power absolutely comes from the local power company. Before Tesla installs a Supercharger station, they do a site survey and determine if there is enough power available. Tesla Superchargers come in 3 sizes, 72kW, 150kW and 250kW. I understand the 350kW chargers are on the horizon. The Supercharger station on I-10 in Quartzite, AZ has 8 150kW stalls and 28 250kW stalls. That sounds like a lot of power. Here is the trick: when I connect my car to the 250kW charger, I see the charge rate goes all the way up near 250kW. That lasts only a short time, with the charge rate coming down pretty quickly. Even though there are a lot of stalls, everybody gets there at a different time, so the peak levels out. Not to mention that I have never seen more that six or seven cars there at one time. The amount of power needed at any given time is a lot less than it appears to be.

I use the Tesla Wall Connector, which connects to a 220V line. To utilize the full available power from this device, it need to be connected to a 60 A breaker. Peak charging current is in the range of 45-48 amps. It takes 4-5 hours to charge from 10% to 90%. After a while the current tapers off until it is very low as the battery comes toward full charge.