Originally Posted By: artie505
To clarify, that sounds like it pertains to a clean install of macOS 10.13, but not to upgrading an existing installation.
Yes that refers to a clean install. However since the installer does not offer a format option for SSD/Flash drives you would still have to perform the encryption as a separate step (❓❓unless the drive was already encrypted❓❓) confused That opens up another set of possible installation scenarios that I will leave to someone with lots of time and patience not to mention lots of Macs to experiment with.

NOTE: Converting an existing HFS+ volume to APFS — not encrypted — only takes several seconds.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein