[I got behind on the comments (I've had to focus on the car purchase process, doubly so since there is so much more to learn this time) so I'll publish the "Featured Comments" to the EV post here. The comments are out of order; they're usually in some semblance of the order in which they came in. "Featured Comments" is meant to be a sampling. The remainder of the comments will appear underneath the original post (below this one) as usual (they're all posted now). Sorry for the delay. It's been a wild week, and very full. In honor of the subject, commenter names in an appropriate color. —Mike]

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Now: EV = Electric Vehicle

15 years ago: EV = Electronic Viewfinder

65 years ago: EV = Exposure Value

:-)

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R. Edelman: "Mike, you got a fantastic deal on the Ariya. You deserve it! I have a friend who owns one. They are very nice vehicles. I believe they are made in Japan, which means good quality. I own a [Nissan] Leaf, which has been reliable, and dealer service has always been good. If you plan to travel with it, streamline payments by signing up with one or more of the charging networks that are available. I think that you will be quite happy with it. Enjoy!"

AN: Agree. I’ll just add two points: 1.) There are already more EV chargers up and down those highways than most people think (chargers are found via apps, not signs or billboards). 2.) Once you get used to the different paradigm, it’s often possible to charge while running errands or traveling (e.g. the car charges while you shop, or eat lunch, or do whatever it is you plan to do other than driving that day). I’ve been traveling for the past five days, and I’ve only waited for a charge once, for about 15 minutes. Otherwise all charging has taken place while doing something else that I needed or wanted to do anyway."

William Giokas: "Good luck with your new EV. The Winter will be the test on how well your new EV will perform. Your range will drop and effect how many long-range trips you can make in the Winter."

Fons (partial comment): "We take our Tesla on long distance trips. We have gone from the home base in The Netherlands all the way to the south of Spain, north to Norway, and east to Montenegro. On those trips, we need to spend a bit of time at the superchargers, of course. On average, we have to take a 30-min. break every 2.5 hours. So we can supercharge 24 times, and still spend less time at the fuel station than if we would go with one of our old cars. Most of the time we combine our charging stops with a nice break to get something to eat or drink. Or you can just go for a little walk. Or in case you do not want any of those things, you can just play a game or watch a movie on the onboard entertainment system.

"On longevity of the battery: our car nears 10 years, and its range has reduced by 15 km in the last five years, or less than 5%. Longevity of the tires is something else altogether.

"Side note, we actually kept our Mazda MX5 for a few months after switching to the electric. Although it was a fantastic car, and heaps of fun to drive, it never left the garage after the Tesla arrived. But with all of these things, YMMV."

Carlos Pessoa: "You make a great point about how EVs require a shift in how we think about refueling. But I believe their usefulness depends heavily on whether you can actually charge at home. Take my case, for example: I live in an older apartment building where installing an EV charger in my parking spot—or anywhere in the garage, for that matter—isn’t allowed. And that’s not unusual; it’s actually the norm where I live. So for people like me, range anxiety (loved that term, by the way) would be a daily reality, not just a theoretical worry. In that sense, EVs absolutely have a place—but I think the use case is narrower than many assume, especially for those of us without access to home charging."

Daniele (partial comment): "The biggest problem I see is too much powerful interests touched by this. Energy model change does not come easy, as is blatantly obvious these days on so many fronts. I went through the phase you're in now (let's call it obsession?) when the first Leaf and Zoe were out; four years ago, I finally got a Peugeot e-208 with a real range of about 150 miles as a first car for the family! And I live in a rural area to boot. In four years, I drove almost 50k miles on it, including long round trips. I just got used to how to manage things and it has been more than OK. I recently got a Kia EV6."

Thomas Mc Cann: "I let my battery drop to 50% and then top up to 80%. Eighty percent is better for the battery apparently. I previously had a BMW i3. This had a small BMW motorcycle engine which cut in when the battery got low, to recharge the battery enough for 40 more miles. I never suffered range anxiety."

Polestar 4 EV

Craig Beyers: "When I lived in a single-family home and commuted ~40 miles round trip for work, an EV would have been logical for transportation, except for the several 500+ miles round trip trips each year. Now, when I’m retired and live in an apartment, an EV isn’t very logical—and I have the same long trips. Why? I can’t install a charger at my apartment and would have to drive to a charger, plug in, wait for the charge, and pay retail for electricity. I could cope with long-distance by driving two hours, taking a break, including charging, and continuing on. Charging time would extend my trip but not onerously. I’d still have to pay retail for electricity, but the cost would be tolerable. Purchasing an EV to replace a paid-for gas vehicle also doesn’t make sense. So, while I’d like an EV, there’s no logical reason to buy one. I’m both disappointed and relieved."

Tim McGowan: "Congratulations. Thoughts become Actions. Updates—we need progress reports. Will this help you get out and do more photography?"

Mike replies: tl;dr version: Yes. For the longer version, it's complicated, so I think the full answer should be reserved for a future post.

John Kauk: "Congratulations on the EV purchase, Mike. I hope you enjoy the experience. I've driven an EV since 2018, beginning with a Tesla Model 3, which I traded recently for a Rivian R1S. EVs are great for day-to-day, and I find them really good for travel as well."

Scott: "My wife has had her electric vehicle for more than 1 1/2 years, and hasn’t visited a public charging station ever. She loves not having to stop to refuel, as one does with ICE vehicles. She just plugs the car in whenever it needs a charge, in our garage. The car gets a bit over 300 miles (~500km) on a charge, so we could do more driving than I ever want to do in a day with only one stop. Of course, if you don’t have a garage or other private parking, you will need to use public charging stations. I was in London last month and in some residential areas,the streetlights have been outfitted with outlets which can be used to charge your car."

james wilson: "My RAV4 plug-in hybrid is the answer. I drive all-electric in town and have the gas engine for long trips or when I forget to plug in. It is fast. Loads of power at a touch of the pedal at any speed. My battery range is about 40 miles but I rarely stomp on the pedal. YMMV."

Mike replies: PHEVs are simultaneously the best of both worlds and the worst of both worlds. That's a longer subject too. Of course they probably make the most sense right now. I started this journey looking at hybrids. I absolutely loved the new Honda Civic Hybrid, which is essentially an electric car with an Atkinson-cycle engine as a generator and for direct drive in the final highway gear. It's actually a transmissionless vehicle. It can get 60 MPG if you read owners' reports. And I can attest that the interior is a decided step up from Toyota's competition. 

Daniel: "A major slice of the car-owning population is always left out of these discussions. Car owners who don’t have a personal garage in front of their homes to park and charge the car. People who live in apartments and cities. In America this may be a minority, but it’s a big minority. What is the solution for these millions of people to charge their vehicles?"

Mike replies: Writ much larger, this is very much like the transition to digital cameras. At first, skepticism, concern and puzzlement were widespread and significantly justified. But the broader landscape today (smartphones for 60% of the world's population) is radically different than even the most passionate of pioneer adopters were envisioning in the 1990s. I suspect this will echo in the EV transition as well. Certainly we will not be burning oil derivatives at the point of use for transportation in 2100, or even 2050. But I'm not deluded enough to think I can say what the situation will actually be then. When my dear friend and BTZS founder Phil Davis was nearing the end of his life, he said the thing he regretted most was that he didn't get to see what was going to happen. Ditto!

Ragnar Våga Pedersen: "Turning the car(d)s. Worth seeing."

Hyundai Ioniq 6 EV

Jeff Hohner: "You nailed it. When we got our EV (a 2024 Hyundai Kona EV) we rejoiced in its quiet, its acceleration and its economy. But the thing we found ourselves enjoying most about it was unexpected: no longer having to visit the gas station! We charge at home. At first, we charged with the level one charger that came with the car. Several months later we got a level two charger (a FLO Home X5 7.2kW). We run the car’s battery down to 20% as recommended by Hyundai, then charge it to 80%, again as recommended. The L2 charger does this easily overnight, even with the charger throttled back to 20 amps (the battery prefers slower charging). A setting in the car schedules charging to start at bedtime. If we’re getting close to 20%, we just plug the car in after coming home from work, and the car’s soft female voice intones, 'Charging scheduled.' We’re living in the future! as Talking Heads sang in 1977."

Peter Barnes: "You got it Mike. The ABC of charging EVs: Always Be Charging. Yes, ICE cars refuel fast, but you have to be there. EVs can do what ICE cars can't—refuel while unattended. You are home, your car is sitting in the carport/garage/driveway until you need it again tomorrow—plug it in. I have owned an EV for six years, no other vehicle. Can't remember having range anxiety. The only people I know with range anxiety are people thinking about buying an EV. None of my friends with EVs have it; it is a condition that seems to cure itself within days of the EV arriving."

David N (partial comment): "Mr. Johnston, I don’t mind your EV articles at all. You study your off-topics and have what I consider a good approach. Maybe I missed a post, but please also consider the privacy invasiveness of new cars generally, if you haven’t already. They are rolling surveillance machines that record and broadly distribute data about you and your driving. Round about a year ago Mozilla Foundation published a study on it."

Mr Pak Ming Wan: "I rented an EV in California for the first time earlier this year. I too expressed range anxiety with the rental car assistant, but he said to me this: 'You will see that in California an EV is more convenient than you might imagine.' He was right.

"But what I found surprising was the change in social habits, as you mention. Parents would drive to charging stations in the evening with their kids and watch Netflix with them whilst charging. Shops had chargers as a destination for customers—I got into the habit of combining my visits to CVS and Target with charging. The office had charging stations so going to work was charging too. It was really a low lift to go electric there."

Mike replies: For some of these reasons, a few months ago Walmart announced a heavy commitment to installing its own charging stations in Walmart and Sam's Club parking lots. Their hope is to equal the largest network—Tesla's Supercharger network—in five years, which took Tesla 15 years to do. (Read a short statement of Walmart's purpose by John Higham, Electrical Vehicle Association Board Member.)

Jimmy Reina: "Living in California, we probably have a distorted perception of the availability of charging stations, but my own conclusions are...the market will deliver. No 19th-century capitalist worth their salt ever said, 'Wow look at all these gasoline filling stations, maybe we should invent a horseless carriage powered by an internal combustion engine.' This is not a chicken/egg situation, but a 'necessity is the mother of invention' situation. Having said that, there has always been range anxiety. In the early days of the automobile, it was not uncommon to see a can of fuel mounted on the fender or running board."

Frank Hamsher (partial comment): "Your comments are spot on. We have 2.5 years of experience driving an EV. In that entire time, the only time we have had to use a public charge station was while we were waiting to have a dedicated mains power socket installed in our garage so that we could charge the car without risking an overload on other house circuits. [...] Primary emotion: LOL as we drive by the petrol stations! I calculate that we are saving A$1,500 per year."

Walfredo Cirne (partial comment): "Please keep writing OT topics you are highly interested in, Mike. They are fun to read. Let me offer you one suggestion to research. Consider an e-bike. Not as replacement for your car. But in addition to it."

Gary Merken: "I'm thinking of the times I drove from southwest Connecticut to northeast Florida in one day. A distance of about 980 miles. Leaving Greenwich at 5:45 a.m., I would never had made Jacksonville by 9:15 p.m. if I'd had to stop for 45 minutes two or three times along the way to recharge."

Andrew: "Never going to a gas station is the best thing about an electric (or plug-in hybrid) car. This is why I think you should try an L1 charger before worrying about an L2 charger. If a slow trickle is sufficient to top you of overnight, then why bother getting a faster charger? Will you even notice if it finishes charging a few hours earlier?"

Mike replies: I'll be doing that at first. I get the car tomorrow (Monday the 4th), and my electrician can't come install the 240v outlet until early September. (Tradesmen are hard to get up here.) So I'll be Level 1 for a month or so. (For anyone who hasn't been following along, Level 1 is sourcing power from an ordinary 120v household outlet, like the kind in your living room.)

schralp: "You hit the nail on the head; best thing about an EV is always having a 'full' tank—actually, 80–90% for best battery hygiene. I got mine in 2018 and rarely care about range. The key when you do take a road trip is to stop for brief top offs in the 20–80% range where they charge the fastest. I rarely stop for more than 10 minutes. Again though that is a tiny minority of my use case. Never going to the gas station is awesome and the electricity is a bargain compared to gas."

[Thanks to all commenters, featured and not.]

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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[UPDATE: I done did the deed! I bought a 2023 Nissan Ariya Engage e-4orce EV with 3,700 miles on it (not a typo) for $20,995 (also not a typo) on August 1st, 2025, ten years to the day after I closed on the sale of my house in Wisconsin to move here. Super smooth, fast, comfortable car with lots of luxury touches. "Like New" in used camera terms.

Nissan (manufacturer) Ariya (model) Engage (trim tier) e-4orce (AWD). It was the sixth of the original eight trim levels in 2023, third from the bottom, one of only two trims with the smaller battery. The original price was approx. $48,190 two+ years ago. That's about a 56–57% depreciation in two years, which is...a lot for a near-luxury-level SUV with only 3,700 miles on it.

Three main reasons it was so cheap AFAIK: 

• Nissan is limping globally in terms of business health
• Smaller battery + dual motors and AWD with tons of e-horsepower and torque = low range
• Slow charging, both at home (7.2 kW) and at DC Fast Chargers (130 kW)

All three of those are bad for sales, especially since charging speed and driving range are the chief concerns of new EV adopters. (That was Musk's big innovation with Tesla: give the cars great big heavy batteries to quiet consumers' range concerns.) 

I bought it mainly because it was within reach for me, which almost nothing is, but there's a lot I like about it. Mainly, it has an opulent and very tasteful interior, but without the increasingly trifling overcomplications in the interiors of the highest models (I don't need a motor to open the secondary glove box, for instance). Main thing I'll touch on: it's possibly the most comfortable car I, now a sedentary overweight 6'1" 68-year-old*, have ever clambered into. The exceptionally good seats slide back automatically when you open the door to make egress and entry easier, the height and the lack of a stepover are very comfortable, and I love the elaborate "coffee table" which is what Nissan calls the center armrest. Importantly (I might even say crucially) for me, there's no center stack. The sharp side of a center stack digging into the side of my knee in a painful way is a surprisingly prevalent problem for me, disqualifying my second choice, the new Civic Hybrid.

Two pet-peevish things I love: you can cover up the cup holders, which are an eyesore in most vehicle cockpits IMO. And you lower the tailgate with your arm, which I remain convinced is something I am capable of doing all by myself like a big boy. No offense if your taste is for the opposite.

Anyway, brave new world. I'm as excited as a kid with a new toy. However, this news means you will stop hearing about EVs very shortly now, as I'll be "stopping shopping" soon. (And, as always [cheap pens?!? Really Mike?], thank you for your patience with me.) My late brother Scott's rule amongst the brothers was "new sheet metal requires pictures," but I haven't taken delivery yet. Pictures to come. 

 

I beg your pardon for the off-topic post, but I'm just immersed in learning about EVs and everything associated with them (great fun, by the way) and I can't help but have the subject on the brain. (I have this problem: it's by far easiest to write about whatever I'm enthusiastic about at the moment. A few of you might possibly have noticed.)

Here's the thought: it's that one big problem with EVs resides, collectively, in our own heads. We need to re-train ourselves to think differently about fueling.

For years—forever—we have learned, practiced, and internalized the liquid-fueling protocol, namely, drive till empty and then fuel completely all at once, while on the move—that is, as a stop in the midst of driving around or driving toward a destination. So far, everybody except EV adopters still wants to mentally shoehorn electric cars into the liquid-fueling model—drive till almost empty then fuel all at once en route, while out driving. Well, not to sound like a second-grader, but that's not fair. At some point we'll have to change that thinking. Electric refueling goes like this: top off if needed when the vehicle is at rest, meaning mostly at home. It's a new way of thinking about fueling, with a new set of plusses and minuses. So by assuming or insisting that electric cars must replicate the paradigm of liquid refueling above all else, people are naturally allowing their thinking about EVs to be distorted. They have mental blinders on, so to speak. Mental blinders of their own making. Because, obviously, electric refueling is not going to be equally good at the one thing that liquid refueling is best at. 

That's what creates "range anxiety"—because we're thinking about driving till empty. And we're assuming we'll need to charge on the road. And all of us (or maybe I should speak for myself) are familiar with that panicky feeling of suddenly realizing the gas gauge is low. Or of actually running out of gas and becoming stranded. But from most of the EV owners I've heard from, they don't drive till empty. That's not how the new model works. They let the charge go down as it will or as it must and then charge it back up more or less right away, the next time the car is at rest and not being used.

I first encountered this idea about fueling and peoples' thinking about it in an article written by Adrian Salinas at an Australian site called ArenaWire.

For most non-city-dwelling drivers (I didn't say all, and yes, I know the exceptions are out there), the car sits idle for most of most days, and even more of the nights. That's certainly true of what I would call "commuter" driving, meaning [home —> work or errands —> home]. Put it this way—imagine you had your own gas pump right next to your garage and the gas in it was nearly free. How many times would you come home at night running on fumes? If you said anything but "never," you're an edge case (maybe you work as a rural mailman. Maybe you have a 170-mile commute each way). If [home —> distant destination] driving is electric fueling's worst thing, then its best thing is that suddenly you do have a gas station in your own garage, with fuel that costs 1/3rd to 1/5th of what liquid fuel costs. Commuter driving is electric's best end-user attribute. Gas/petrol can't touch it.

To figure out if it's for you, all you have to figure out is, how much of your driving leaves the car resting at home, and what's your longest possible daily commuter trip? For me it's a drive to Rochester + maybe 35 extra miles at most doing other things along the way or afterward. That's 150 miles round trip give or take. That's my outlier. Well within the range of all but one or two of the worst EVs still on the market. And 98% if not 99% of my driving is commuter driving, starting and ending at home. For that last 2% or 1%, I could either deal with charging along the way, or rent a car. 

The new 2026 Nissan Leaf, coming this Fall

A funny little aside: I have a friend here who bemoans range anxiety with great drama. At which point I remind him that he's got four cars. What, can't he just snag the keys to the ICE SUV on the way out the door for that road trip? Having a liquid-fuel vehicle as well as an EV is the crude way to quiet range anxiety. Any given person might not want this, and it makes no sense to prescribe it, but then, it's also true that a lot of people have it. Hedges & Company estimates that approximately 37% of US households own two cars, and an additional 22% own three or more cars (via AI overview). I've got a friend who has one "good" (expensive, shiny, new) and one "beater" (worn, working, older) pickup truck, as well as a motley of several lesser cars...and a 4-wheeler, and an enormous motor-scooter he bought for a departed girlfriend, and two real motorcycles, and so on. I don't know his opinion about electric cars, but I'll try to remember to tread gently and not blast him a new one if has the temerity to bring up range anxiety as the "deal killer" with Yr. Hmbl. Ed. 

Finally, not meaning to be incendiary, but...Eisenhower built the entire Interstate highway system. Surely our flattened, infiltrated version of the once-mighty Federal government, meek, meagre and withered as it has become, could eventually shift itself to install EV chargers all along those highways. That would take care of a whole lot of those long-range trips. We even have convenient places already reserved to put them...they're called rest stops.

Mike

*I used to be 6'2", no kidding.

P.S. Here's a nice video about what it actually costs to run an EV.

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

     

Related Stories

• Panda and Predictions (Semi-OT)
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• UPDATE: Range Anxiety (OT)

 

["Open Mike" is the often meandering, summery, sylvan, and serene Editorial Page of TOP, because otherwise you might never hear what Yr. Hmbl. Ed. thinks about stuff. I'm kidding.]

This could be the one

More followups from recent topics:

The Great Pentax Passalong (if you haven't heard, I'm sharing a loaner K3 III Monochrome so interested readers can try it out): I'm all set to ship on Monday. All five participants are all in the Midwest and Northeast, which is handy. It also looks like I played favorites, because I have met three of the recipients in person, but I didn't: I just took the first four people who asked. The fifth, Steve Rosenblum, is a friend—the passalong was essentially his suggestion in the first place, during an unrelated phone call. I bought a hard case for shipping, but it's a little larger than I expected, quite heavy, and it seems to me that apart from increasing shipping cost, it might also draw undue attention to the package en route, so I decided just to ship in a plain cardboard box. As discussed, each participant will ship it to the next on the second Monday they have it—doing so ensures that each person will have it for two weekends and one whole week in between, which should be a generous amount of time for a trial. 

One unexpected headache is insurance. I wanted to add it as a rider on my homeowner's policy for the duration, but the insurance agent is playing it's-not-that-simple / we-need-to-know-more. I'm sure they're rubbing their hands together, twirling their figurative mustachios, and calculating how many gazillions of hundreds of dollars they can hit me up for*. I'm going to go ahead and ship anyway, because, you know, the world is turning, and we're all getting older, and "time and tide wait for no man" (Geoffrey Chaucer, A.D. 1395, Prologue to The Clerk's Tale). At least it will be insured while it's being shipped; for the interim periods it looks like I'll be taking my chances. 

To a tea: Life tip of extremely limited usefulness, except to a few: I accidentally steeped my white tea for an hour and fifteen minutes because I got distracted while the electrician was here. It tasted fine. (It was the second steeping.) So, another experiment done: you can steep white tea indefinitely without ruining it. My suspicion/supposition—IANAE—is that the darker the tea, the more careful you have to be about steeping times. I could be wrong. 

'Lectric avenue: I'm going ahead and getting my garage wired for an electric car charger. Mind you, I've pretty much decided not to buy an electric car right now**; nor have I yet decided what charger to get. What I'm getting installed is a 240-volt NEMA 14-50 outlet that can be used for lots of different car chargers. That way, when and if I get an EV, I'll be ready. If I never do, then it can be listed as a feature of the house for potential home buyers.

The charger I'm considering is a Lenz Level 2 40-amp with a standard J1772 socket, unless somebody wants to talk me out of that. It supports 9.6-kW charging, which is plenty (7.2 kW is actually enough for most people).

By the way, the electrician pointed out that if you buy a car charger, you can take it with you when you sell the house. Connecting via an outlet rather than hard-wiring makes that simpler.

The Most Desirable Camera on the Planet: Do you remember that we used to do a feature under this heading every so often? It's gone moribund in recent years. However I think there's a candidate out there right now: the Leica Q3. 

One of the features that made Leica special way back in the film days was that although it had only a small percentage of the market, it had very strong owner loyalty. Back then, too, a far greater percentage of objectively accomplished photographers shot Leica than its market share would predict. And a surprising number of professionals of various types owned at least one Leica. I always tried to keep my ear to the ground regarding such intangibles. 

I've said this before, but my spidey-sense is that serious, dedicated, engaged photographers—whatever term you choose to use, however you want to phrase it; I mean people who are into it—love their Leica Q's. For a camera so expensive, so minimally featured, and so limited in application (fixed lens, which can be either a bug or a feature depending on your point of view), it gets waaaaaay above its expected share of passion, dedication, enthusiasm, and approval. I've never seen or tried a Q3. I should remedy that.

Courtesy of Ricoh

Runner-up: The venerable and venerated Ricoh GR III, which many photographers also like a lot. I've linked to the "x" version with the 40mm-equivalent lens, not because it's my own favorite focal length, which it is, but also because Ricoh said the following last May: "The production and shipment of the RICOH GR III, currently on the market, are scheduled to be discontinued this July, due to difficulty in procuring of parts and components. However, the production and marketing of the RICOH GR IIIx will be continued for the time being." Note also that the GR IV is being planned. It will have a new lens, a new sensor, and a new processing engine. So if you're interested you might want to wait.

An interesting little twist: Ricoh now makes a version of the GR III with a built-in (but defeatable) filter called "HDF," for highlight diffusion filter. It costs only a little more. The general effect can be observed in the picture above. That sounds pretty exciting, until you realize that if you use an ILC with lenses that have filter threads on the end, you can just buy a highlight diffusion filter and get the same effect. But hey, fun is fun. The new GR IV will come in an HDF version as well, according to Ricoh.

Can't resist a doggie comment: The following can now be observed at The Humane Animal Welfare Society of Waukesha County, back in Wisconsin, where I first met a friendly, charming, handsome, but anxiety-prone pitbull/Labrador mix named Butters. (He was wearing a lime-green bandana around his neck. Butters was nothing if not cool.)

This was in return for a donation of only $125, a bargain if you ask me. Consider a humane animal shelter in your annual giving! HAWS Waukesha is a marvelous place that did a great job for us. I will always reserve a warm feeling in my heart for certain kindly members of the staff, c. 2013.

Mike

*Insurance doesn't work. It's a swindle and a scam. I've been paying homeowners insurance for years and years, and finally, a few years ago, needed to make a small claim, for a perfectly valid reason, exactly the kind of thing insurance is supposed to be for. Their reply, boiled down to the essence, was "Oh, you don't understand. We don't pay YOU. You pay US." They decide when and how much I pay them, and they decide when and how much they pay me. That arrangement works out quite well for them but doesn't work so well for me. The variables turn out to be: you pay us a lot, regularly; and, we pay you almost nothing, ever. It makes steam come out of my ears whenever I read the words "insurance" and "billionaire" in the same sentence. Scoundrels. /rant

**Unless I can find a '23 Nissan Leaf SV Plus that actually costs what the internet says it does (I'm not hopeful of that. Want another rant? Get me going on car dealer bait-and-switch chicanery, which as far as I can see is unrestrained and has become the norm now). My idea is to pay cash for an outgoing model (electric) Leaf (it's being replaced this Fall) and keep the (gas/petrol) Acura. I'll use the Leaf as a runabout and retire the old car for limited duty in snow, super-cold weather, and long trips. Anyone in the know have opinions about that plan? I'd love to hear. Oh, yeah—this is unless the insurance cost for a second car makes the idea untenable. (See above....)

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Tom Burke: "I can’t comment on any of the photography stuff in this post—I’m neither a mono photographer nor a fixed-lens lover—but I have had a couple of good experiences with home insurance which I thought I might pass back to you. More than 15 years ago we were burgled, and the burglars got away with lots of tech toys—DSLRs and lenses, laptops, and other bits of electronics. Just a month or so later I received a big box full of ‘new for old’ replacements; about £10,000 worth in total. Then during the pandemic we had a water leak under the kitchen floor, which caused a lot of damage to the flooring and joists. Again, all repaired over a few months by our insurance company’s contractor. No idea of the cost, but there were numerous visits by their people. So our experience has been good. We’re pretty ‘insurance positive’ to be honest."

Mike replies: It salves my soul and soothes my temper to hear it.

Stan B.: "I have the first iteration of both cameras in question, and can't speak higher of either. The GR is my most used camera of all time (and I've been photographing for well over four decades). It literally fits in a pocket, has an incredible lens, and delivers outstanding IQ—no camera that size delivers better. No, it doesn't have a proper viewfinder, but its pluses well outnumber its one lacking feature which would also defeat its most defining feature—its size. As much as I appreciate the anticipated IBIS in the upcoming iteration, I would've rather had a return of its traditional flash, so wonderfully convenient for portrait fill.

"I purchased a used Q for half price, it is a larger, more expensive version of the GR with a proper viewfinder—and although it has stellar IQ, in truth, it's not (as one would think) that much better than the GR, although the overall feel and build is on another level (as expected). Each camera is a joy to use, provided you're comfortable with one lens—and I've never had to dive into menu oblivion after inadvertently pressing something, somewhere on either. The GR is the perfect take-anywhere, any-day camera that can provide a quality print—no questions asked. The Q provides the tactile, quality experience and results when photography rules the day."

Jeff: "That fixed lens on the Q series also includes a macro mode for added flexibility. And the body/lens is IP 52 rated for weather sealing, unusual for camera companies today (the SL series is even better at IP54). I prefer the Q3-43, and would appreciate the Q2 Monochrom if I didn’t already have M Monochrom versions.

"I’ve also had exceptional experiences from my home insurance policies in the few significant instances I’ve needed them in over 45 years of home ownership. This includes a rider collections policy that I’ve used for camera gear, first edition photo books and vintage prints. When a print was damaged during a house move, the company quickly wrote off the loss, paying full listed value, which I determined in advance. Company and individual policy differences matter."

     

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I've been rather consumed by car shopping the last few days. I just wanted to comment on "range anxiety" with EVs. To add my comment to the other comments.

I've simply noticed that most of the anxiety about charging infrastructure comes from people who don't own EVs. Most people who own EVs don't consider it much of a problem. That seems fair to say from the comments here, or would you not agree?

How far do you need to drive? Some EVs have a range of 300 miles. That's the distance from Chicago to Detroit. It's also the distance from Chicago to St. Louis. Do people really think they're going to be stranded in the wilderness with a dead car because they can't manage to find a charging station between Chicago and Detroit, or between Chicago and St. Louis? 

Second point; everybody who talks about range anxiety doesn't seem to mention the flip side of the coin, which is having a private gas station in your garage. Put a Level 2 charger in the garage and you can "gas up" whenever you want to. Similarly, the FUD spreaders online constantly talk about waiting for the car to charge. I don't have time to wait all day, etc. When, actually, if you charge at home, it's a lot quicker than filling up at a gas station. You plug in the car when you get home at night and unplug it in the morning. It can't take as much as two minutes. You only have to wait on long road trips. In everyday life (well, if your situation resembles mine) there's no waiting involved.

Now, of course, "your mileage may vary." As they say. Everyone's circumstances are different. But it's been more than two years since I did a long road trip. My driving goes from my house, to one or two or three or four other places, back to my house. Mostly, I drive to town and back, 15 miles round trip. Maximum mileage in a day is probably a trip to Rochester, 116 miles round trip. I drive to Rochester maybe once every two months, and it's probably less than that. Add some toodling around in Rochester, an errand or three on the way home, a meeting that evening, and I might be at a maximum of what, 160 miles for a day? That's well within the 10–80% range of every car I've looked at so far (I drove a Chevy Equinox EV yesterday). That's worst case.

I'm bitterly disappointed that I probably can't get an Ioniq 5. I love driving that thing. So pleasing. Love everything about it—how it fits me, the ride, the controls, the punchy power, the regen paddles. But I don't think I'm willing to risk the ICCU issue. So now I'm thinking of leasing a 2025 Ford Mach-e for a few years. Sort of just for the experience: I'd like to experience an electric car. Even if it's only temporary. I'm mainly simply curious. I want to find out firsthand what it's like to live with. (This is the impulse that made me into a reviewer: I want to try things for myself and decide for myself.) And I'd like to write about it. Then, 2–3 years from now, I'll regroup and figure out what to do going forward.

It would make the most sense economically to keep my current car longer, so I might. And I must say I think I'd miss it. It's been trouble-free and I'm very comfortable with it. On the other hand, YOLO. And I ain't getting any younger. 

Switching to the passive voice, as people often do when talking about commitments: the decision has not yet been made.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Bob G.: "These battery or gas issues sound like the battery-dependent/manual issues back when the then 'new' all-battery cameras were starting to come in…"

Mike replies: Yes, wasn't that odd? For some reason that's something we've never really discussed. In the days of film SLRs, people so strongly desired "battery independence" that some manufacturers, including Leica and Olympus (which was briefly a leading cameramaker in the early 1980s) made specific models that were completely manual and could operate with a completely dead battery or no battery at all. And those cameras usually cost more, and were more rare, than the regular versions (the OM-3T remained scarce and prized for years). I can't recall the name of the Leica equivalent but it was an R SLR. People prized the M6 because the only thing that wouldn't work if the battery died was the meter. And many SLRs had a single shutter speed that would work manually, so that you couldn't be "caught" with a dead battery. You'd be limping, but you could still take pictures.

And those were for button batteries that lasted A YEAR OR MORE in normal use! Remember the admonition to change your camera's batteries every year on your birthday whether your camera needed it or not? The whole situation always seemed borderline crazy to me—especially because we were talking about button batteries that were tiny and weighed about as much as, what, a nickel? How hard was it to stash a backup battery (or two, if you camera required two) in your camera bag in those days? And that would be all you need to cover you in case of the apparently much-dreaded battery failure problem. I mean, even if you were going into the wilderness for a year, take a spare. You'd never feel the weight in your backpack, especially not compared to your backup body and your birding lens.

Then, after a few years of transition, everybody's like, oh, yes, these digital cameras require rechargeable batteries that have to charged virtually EVERY DAY, but we're all fine with that, no problem, we can handle it.

Huh? That was one of those "does not compute" situations. What happened to all that battery anxiety from the SLR days? Where did it go? Maybe all the people who bought all-manual 35mm cameras just switched to view cameras and a Sunny-16 chart, beats me.

Steve Rosenblum: "I appear to be a couple of days late to this discussion, but here are my two cents. I owned a 2020 Tesla Model Y for five years, and last month traded it for a 2025 Mustang Mach-E Premium with the extended range battery. Observations about EVs in general:

1. They are lots of fun to drive due to the instant torque and lack of transmission.
2. In five years nothing needed to be repaired on my Model Y after dealing with the initial problems they had with fit and finish issues. No maintenance costs beyond rotating the tires, changing the cabin filter and wiper blades, and they suggest you have the brake calipers cleaned each year if you drive in snowy places that use salt on roads.
3. Despite being an all-wheel-drive vehicle I found it did much better in the Michigan winter with snow tires compared to all weather tires, so I had those put on each winter.
4. The estimated 'range' for these cars is optimistic and I suspect they are based upon driving 65 in the summer with the wind at your back with a light foot on the pedal and the AC either off or set at 80 degrees. In the winter you lose around 30% of your range and, if very cold, more.
5. If you go on a long road trip you do need to plan your route considering charging options. The Tesla supercharger network is the best in terms of convenience and speed of charging and now you can charge non-Tesla cars at them using an adapter. It takes around 20 minutes to charge from 20% to 80% full at a Tesla supercharger. Going on long trips off the interstate system is more problematic.
6. The vast majority of the time I drive within 10 miles of home, or at most 50 miles of home and a home Level 2 charger is just the ticket.
7. The best compromise for those with serious range anxiety is a PHEV, or plug in hybrid. My wife has a RAV4 PHEV that can run for around 45 miles on EV mode before shifting to hybrid mode. Ninety-five percent of the time she doesn't drive more than that each day and can recharge at night. She rarely visits a gas station. If we go on a long road trip we take her car so as not to worry about charging.
8. My brother in law did the ultimate climate-friendly EV hack—he installed solar on the roof of his garage and powers his Tesla completely from the sun. Of course, he lives in California and the ROI on solar panels takes quite a while to catch up (soon to be worse due to recent 'Big Beautiful Bill' changes) but still, pretty cool.

"I love my new Mach-E which I have on a three-year lease. It is in all ways a better car than the Model Y. Just as fun to drive, but much nicer interior, smoother ride, excellent fit and finish, nice B&O audio system. The only defect I have detected since delivery is the exterior temperature sensor reads a bit high, so they swapped that out. Otherwise, perfect quality control. Three of my friends also have Mach-E's and they love them as well."

hugh crawford (partial comment): "On another site there’s a conversation about range anxiety, and I remembered that my father had a little Datsun 720 diesel pickup with an 80 gallon auxiliary tank for fueling farm equipment. In theory it could go over 2,500 miles but we never got it more than 30 miles away from home, and Chevron would deliver 500 gallons of gasoline and diesel to our house. I used to drive 2,800 miles nonstop a couple times a year, but that was 20 something year old me."

Dan B.: "In case you haven’t seen it, the VW ID.4 is supposedly available for as low as $99/month for a two-year lease, that’s a true giveaway and might be a good way to experience an EV at minimal cost...."

Mike replies: My experience so far is that those "offers" are just the "bait" in bait-and-switch come-ons. In every case so far where I've brought a supposed lease offer in to a dealer (four), the actual lease offer made to me has been much higher. Example: on Ford's "Payment Calculator" online I could get a result for a Mach-E Select (the lowest trim) of $330 a month with a $4,069 down payment, 36 months and 15,000 miles per year, whereas the actual lease offer at the dealer was $425 per month with a $5,000 down payment for 36 months and 12,000 miles per year.

Mileage restrictions on a lease kind of defeat the purpose of an electric car for me, because the cheaper fuel would partially be so I could feel more free to drive around photographing.

At Honda, the supposed Prologue lease of $209 per month for two years was contingent on my current car qualifying for "Loyalty or Conquest," meaning, it had to be a Honda (thus proving I was loyal) or it had to be a car from a list of Honda's competitors (meaning they want to conquer those brands). Anyway, my car is an Acura, which is a division of Honda, and it was made at the Honda Manufacturing of Indiana plant in Greenburg, Indiana. But did that qualify as loyal? No. Because Honda and Acura's financial divisions are separate and that's who has to approve the lease. My offer was $289 per month and a much heftier down payment.

That $99 figure you mention comes from Electrek, which merely said one dealer in California was offering it. Also in some cases the specific cars available with those low lease numbers are very limited. So, for instance, by the time I got around to asking about a specific advertised lease at Hyundai, the numbers of cars offered with that lease price came up for different models as "0, 0, and 0." So it seems that the makers will offer just a very few cars at one specific dealer somewhere at very low lease prices just to get those "as low as" reports on the internet. Then you toddle to the dealerships with your naive hopefulness and they get a chance to pitch you on a car.

     

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I'd like your opinion.

I have a chance to buy a new 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 for $29k, which is a.) a lot of money but b.) not bad for a car these days—in general, never mind a full EV. (Local dealer has a few 2024 models left.)

Think I should?

More specifically, do you think you might enjoy reading the adventures of your quirky and Quixotic online friend Mike as he grapples with the NWO (new world order) of a full EV? 

Not every day of course. Not every week. But ongoing. You know how I do—certain topics kinda recur. We'd probably check in a handful of times a year, sort of a long-term review kind of thing, plus the odd observation here and there.

The existing Mikemobile is at 11 years and 150k miles, and is beginning to show rust. Median Blue Book on it is $5,900. It's running fine and has new tires, and I could keep it longer. On the other hand, I've kinda had EVs on the brain since I drove that Mustang Mach-E almost a year ago, and it would hardly be an impulsive or irresponsible thing to do to replace the old buggy.

I am this close to pulling the trigger. Please, influence the influencer! 

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Curt Gerston: "We’ve had a Hyundai Kona Electric for three years now. Love love love it. We smile as we pass gas stations; never have to change oil. We charge it in our driveway. Range is never an issue. Go ahead…join the future, and feel better about the miles you cover to go take pictures."

Mike replies: I didn't mention it because I was afraid it would sound too much like rationalizing, but that's honestly one of the motivations. If I go out for two hours looking for pictures with the Sigma, the hours seem to melt away but, day upon day, the gasoline bill gets pretty alarming. I'm not saying I'd save money by buying an electric car, but I'd feel more relaxed about staying out. 

The way I calculate it, the savings on gas and oil would pay for about one year and two months of car payments over the six year life of the loan. The sale of the old Acura would also cover about one year and two months of payments. 

Andre Y: "If you do, make sure you budget for a home level 2 charger, like a Chargepoint Home Flex, along with installation, which can be expensive mainly because of the copper wiring. Make sure the electrician knows how to install EV chargers too, as chargers have different demands than say a clothes dryer outlet: they run continuously at high power for hours at a time compared to 30 minutes or so for a dryer, so they have different requirements for wiring and load capacity. Get the charger hard-wired instead of using a plug because the plug will wear out, and could cause a fire due to intermittent contact and very high electrical loads."

     

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