Arizona Olds & News

Lucid Air electric car

Iaman reports:

I'm making motions to move to AZ for a bit to get my biters fixed (teeth) fixed in Mexico,  today I  talked to a guy, Randy,  my age who built a big house in the mountains, got divorced and now has a wing of the house for rent, sound's good.
I've been looking at the news of the area.  Lucid motors is building plants on both sides of the border for production of their 1000hp electric 235mph car,  I'd never heard of such a company or car.
Apparently there is glut of late season grapes pouring over the border,  trying to beat tariffs. Cool spring means rush of Mexican grapes before threatened tariffs. Almost all grapes imported from Mexico passed through Nogales ports last year, data show.
And 100's of  tunnels under the border walls in Nogales.

He might be exaggerating about the number of tunnels under the border. The story just tells us they found 3 tunnels back in January. 3 tunnels a month times 12 months is 36 tunnels. At that rate, three years would put you over a 100, and this has been going for how long? There's probably thousand's of tunnels. I wouldn't be surprised that to hear that whole sections of the town collapsed due to the number of tunnels.

I got nuthin' on grapes. They make wine and raisins out of grapes. I add raisins to my oatmeal, makes it much more palatable.

The Lucid car factory is going to built in Casa Grande, former home of the Penthouse printing press. Also, from way back in the cold war, it was home to the Corona spy satellite calibration program. And just to tie this up, I used to drive a Toyota Corona.

Elon Musk (the Tesla electric car billionaire) was going to build his big battery factory in Casa Grande. He's also got a big tunnel boring machine project going on. Drugs smugglers are digging tunnels under the border. There might be big money in big, car-size tunnels, but smaller tunnels, like tubes big enough to transport a small package of, I dunno, maybe cocaine or heroin, could be a real money maker. Since the drugs the smugglers are smuggling are probably hard drugs, which take up much less space than evil marijuana, I am surprised they haven't started using pneumatic tubes to get their drugs across the border. A ditch witch should be able to send a four inch pipe a couple hundred yards under the border in  matter of hours. Or maybe they are already doing that, but they just dig a man-sized tunnel every so often so the DEA can claim a victory.

Can't say as I am impressed with the Lucid. I am sure it will be very wonderful, but I ain't got that kind of dough. I mean look at the picture at top. Their target demographic is people who have their own jetliners. And even if I did have the money, I am not sure I would want one. Driving is getting to be more of a pain every day. I like my back yard, my computer, and my big screen TV.

Lucid back seat - gratuitous space car porn
(link goes to YouTube video)

Younger son borrowed my car to drive to Bend over the weekend. He didn't leave me stranded, he left me his 30-year-old Ford pickup truck. Good lord, what a beast. Anyway, I take Cornelius Pass Road over the hill on the way to his house in North Portland and they are working on the wires, so there is a 10 minute delay because traffic is down to one lane and we have to take turns. I don't make it through with the first pack, so I have to wait another ten minutes or so. After that it was smooth sailing. On the way back I took I-5 and as soon as I got pn the interstate the traffic got all creepy-crawly. 20 MPH all the way to highway 26. Can't win for losing.

It came to me that while cruising down the highway, where you aren't crowded and traffic is flowing freely, is pleasant, enjoyable, even relaxing, driving in downtown or creeping along in a traffic jam is a whole lot like work, and it isn't enjoyable work either. I think I'm moving to Montana soon.