Current Electric Vehicle Landscape review

Electric Vehicle Landscape

Review

Plus: Rivian R1T detail review

Back Story:

With Gas prices continuing to grind higher (Now over $7+/Gal in CA) I’m being continually asked for my thoughts on the whole EV landscape (being a relatively early adopter).  Questions range from what vehicle should I buy?  What about range anxiety?  How do I charge? How much does charging cost? How long does it take to get one?  And many more.

I’ve owned a 2016 Tesla Model X (over 100K miles now) for 6+ Years.  I blogged about my experience with it extensively in the first few years. We also own a 2014 Chevrolet Volt. Two weeks ago, we bought a Rivian R1T.  I’ve personally test driven the Lucid Air, Ford Mustang Mach-E and Volvo XC-40.  Obviously, since I bought the Rivian that is my top choice.  I will cover the reasoning in detail later.  If you’re just looking for the Rivian review jump to the end.

First let’s cover some basics:

• Purchase tax credits.  The Federal Government still offers up to $7,500 in tax credits off your taxes for the year in which you purchase the qualifying vehicle.  Be sure to check whether the vehicles you are considering qualify.  See Link here to see if your vehicle will qualify.  Some states also offer tax credits as well as other incentives like HOV lane stickers.
• Charging.  EVs are electric vehicles.  They need to be charged to operate.  Charging is not free!!  Except if you own a very early Tesla Model X where they included free charging for the life of the vehicle.  I’ve found a rule of thumb to be on a per mile basis it will cost you between 1/3^rd and ½ as much as operating a gas powered equivalent sized vehicle and heading lower.  This is electricity usage to charge v Gas to run.
• Where to charge
  • Public charging stations – They are virtually everywhere now.  If you’re just getting started looking at EV’s by the time you get on a reserve list and receive your vehicle they will be everywhere else as well.  This is not an issue now and will only get better as time goes on.  Note all “super or High speed” chargers are not the same and depending on the rate at which your EV can accept a high-speed charge, your experience will vary dramatically.  For example, Tesla has 70KW, 150kw and 300kw charging stations.  Tesla also connects two stations to one source.  So, if there are vehicles parked at both stations sharing one source your rate will be cut in half from what’s published.  I have not yet used enough non-Tesla public charging stations to know if they do the same thing.  When you first plug in your EV to a public supercharging station it will charge slowly at first while the battery is pre-conditioned and then slow again for the last 30% to not damage the battery as it nears capacity.  Note: Tesla for about 2 years had downloaded SW onto my car that limited the supercharge rate to 74kw regardless of the capacity of the charging station.  My cynical side says they did this to stave off a battery warranty claim.  They said it was to save me from myself and help preserve the life of the battery.  See list below of public charging networks rolling out in the US:
    • Here is a good overall rundown and comparison of networks
    • Tesla – Tesla only.  Pretty much everywhere along major highways nationwide
    • ChargePoint- The largest
    • Electrify America.  Born from the settlement with VW and Audi over the catalytic converter scandal.  $1B paid in.  They are almost caught up to Tesla in terms of locations and stations.
    • EVGO – Pretty much everywhere now as well.
    • Variety of proprietary newcomers (Like Rivian) building out their own networks plus utilizing partnerships with public networks.
  • Home charging.  Obviously the most convenient and usually the least expensive on a $/kw basis.  Most vehicles coming out now can be charged off one of the following plug sources:
    • 120V, 240V or wall installed unit from the manufacturer.  Some wall installed units plug directly into a 240V outlet and some require hard wiring directly into your home electrical panel (requires an electrician).  The charge rate varies by plug source type.  120V = 2-3 MPH of charging time.  240V can go up to around 20 MPH and with a wall Unit up to maybe around 30 MPH
    • For me, I’ve found the 240V outlet to be good enough.  The Tesla charges at around 20MPH and the Rivian around 18MPH.  Both are adequate for my use style.  For the volt we have a Bosch wall unit, and it charges at a rate of around 13MPH
• Range.  The distance you can travel on a full charge.  Seems like a simple issue, right?  Wrong!!
  • Headlines coming from the manufacturer are assuming a full charge and perfect conditions.  The standard now is 270+, some options at the 315 level and very few 400+, 1 or 2 500+.  This will continue to improve in lock step with Battery tech.
  • Now comes the complications.  How to convert the manufactured stated range (MSR) to real road driven miles range.  Let’s look at the factors in descending order of impact:
    • Most manufacturers “suggest” you not charge beyond 80% capacity nor let it drop below 20% capacity to protect the life of the battery.  If you abide by this, you knock off 40% of the range right there.  I don’t abide by this.  I’ve run the battery down to 1-2% and if I’m going on a trip and I need the full charge I always fully charge to 100%.  So far, with the Tesla the capacity of the battery has dropped from 250 Miles when new to 220 now.  Not bad for 6 years and over 100K miles.
    • Elevation climbing.  I routinely drive into the mountains.  I climb around 7K feet over a 60-mile range.  For that climb I budget 2 MSR miles for one real road mile.  The good news is for the return trip I can cover the 60 real road miles using only about 10 MSR miles.
    • Speed.  Driving above 70 MPH you will start to see degradation in range performance.  Above 80MPH even more.
    • Air temp.  Outside Air temps above 90 degrees or below 32 degrees and you will see degradation.
    • Weight of cargo.  Add 500 lbs. or more of passengers and cargo weight and the range will degrade.  Towing a trailer is a whole different story.  I have no personal experience here.
    • When on a trip you will find yourself constantly optimizing stops (minimum) with time at stops charging at highest rate.  You will get better at this as you practice.  The Vehicle NAV does not really look to optimize on your behalf.  It attempts to keep you between the 20% and 80% battery capacity.
    • When the vehicle is fully charged you will notice that in the first mile you drive, 3-5 miles will come off your range.  Might be as the battery ages as that is certainly the case for my Tesla now and as I recall was when it was new as well.
    • Bottom line:  MSR miles DO NOT = real road miles.
• Maintenance.  This is a big one!!
  • I’ve had my Tesla Model X for 6 years and over 100K miles.  Never had it serviced once.  That’s right not once.
  • The only maintenance for me has been tires, wiper blades and windshield washer fluid.  In fact, since it never rains in CA anymore, I’ve only changed the blades once and filled the washer tank twice.  I am on my fourth set of tires and they’re not cheap!  Brakes and brake pads can be a maintenance item but since I use the one pedal driving 95% of time, I rarely actually activate the brakes since the engine does the braking.  Have not changed even the pads yet.
  • I’m expecting the same experience with the Rivan.

Choosing an EV

EV Manufacturers are coming out with all shapes and sizes.  I’m mostly going to stick to my own experience with some generalizing applied.  I don’t want to pretend I’ve thoroughly evaluated everything out there.  Mainly I see the manufacturers balancing the style of vehicle the public wants with the type of vehicle that lends itself best to being all electric.  That’s why you see more SUVs and Pick-up trucks coming out first as that’s what the public is buying and with the larger frame dimensions there is more room to store batteries and increase range.

EV features to focus on:

• Range range range!  Range anxiety is real thing.  Don’t underestimate it!!  Just ask my oldest daughter, her husband and then 3-month-old Liam as it took us 17 hours to get home from the mountains last Christmas.  Oh Boy!!!
• Performance.  In my opinion, this should not be much of a consideration.  I don’t need 0-60 in less than 2 seconds.  Most EVs out now are so much higher performing than any Combustion engine car getting to sub 2 seconds does not really matter.  Most EVs do a smooth 0-60 in 3-5 seconds.  And I mean smooth.  100% linear acceleration.  No more going through gears.
• One pedal regenerative driving.  No more using the brake pedal.  Just let off the accelerator and the car brakes.  All the way to a stop with the Rivian.  Not quite to a stop with the 2016 Tesla Model X.  Plus, using the engine to brake rather than the actual brake on the wheels adds energy to the battery and saves having to ever replace brake pads or brakes themselves.
• Driver assist features.
  • Fully autonomous driving mode.  I’m NOT a fan of this.  I used it initially when I got the Tesla to just demonstrate it to passengers as the future of driving (less).  Way too many close calls.  Eventually the NTSB mandated Tesla tighten up on its proof the driver was paying attention and made the whole feature essentially useless.
  • Dynamic cruise is awesome.  Both the Tesla and the Rivian.  I use it 95% of the time I’m on the highway.  All you do is steer.  Choose the car lengths you want to be kept from the car in front and that’s it.
• Cabin noise when driving.  When you test drive the vehicle pay attention to how much noise you hear.  Tire/road noise, wind noise.  Rattling’s.  The Tesla has them all.  Rivian just wind noise.  With no engine noise drowning out all other noises these other noise sources become more pronounced.
• Effective and usable storage.  With the manufactures trying to add every possible additional battery into the vehicle for range purposes, storage can become a premium.  Tesla has good storage; Rivian has great storage.  Ford Mach-E, Volvo not so much.
• Getting in and out.  For whatever reason I’ve found EVs to be harder than old style vehicles to get into and out of.  I waited for the Model X because I found the Model S way to hard to get into and out of.  I still find the Lucid way to hard to get into and out of.  Even the sales guy warned me to duck as I slid into the driver seat.  He was totally right.  I will likely take myself off that list shortly.  Tesla is easiest to access once all doors are fully open.  Fully opening them is the challenge in the Model X.  The Falcon Wing doors are way cool but completely impractical in so many ways I can’t list them all here.  Rarely do they fully open thanks to the overly sensitive sensors.  When they’re open and it’s raining the water just runs right down and into the cabin.  I can go on!!  Oh, one more.  Because there is no frame around the front doors if you open the window while on the freeway and then try and close it, the wind draft prevents it from slotting into the rubber seal on the car frame.  It just runs right up the outside and feels like it will be ripped off the car from the wind force.  After 6 years and I can’t count how many attempts to fix it, they have not been able to fix it.  I never open the window while driving.  Point being, make sure you are comfortable with getting in and out and any price you might have to pay for ease of access.  The Rivian nailed it.  By far the easiest to get in and out of and NO compromising anything to do it.

Rivian R1T review:

• I put my name on the reserve list in February of 2019.  Very early but not as early as I was with the Tesla Model X.  If I compare the experience of the Rivian at the early stage with the tesla Model X at a similar early stage, it’s like night and day!  The Tesla simply was not ready to be released.  The Rivian was.
• I’ve had the R1T for about 3 weeks.  Absolutely love it!  Honestly, I was not sure about a pick-up truck before I took delivery.  Totally sold on it now.  It took some practice parking it in tight spots but now I take it everywhere.
• It feels and drives like a slightly oversized SUV.  But you get a very comfortable 5 passenger seating and massive amounts of storage.  The front Trunk is 50% larger than the Tesla.  Golf clubs easily fit in it.  The Tunnel storage is also very handy and spacious.  The truck bed is well, a truck bed.  Stores tons of stuff with the cover closed and even more with it open and a cargo net holding everything down.  There is also a very handy storage area under the floor of the truck bed which I use for a full size spare but can also be used as a cooler or anything else for that matter.  Has a drain.
• Purchase cost.  For people new to the reserve list figure around $85K – $90K Plus local sales tax and fees.  take $10K off this for early reservations before price increase.  Although a lot of money it’s still 40% less than the Tesla Model X.  This does not factor in the tax incentives.
• Range.  Again awesome.  The range was advertised as 317 Miles per full charge.  I’m getting 330 and still have not hit the break-in point.  I expect to get even more once the battery is fully broken in.  The battery capacity is 135kW v 90kW in my Model X which topped out at 250 when new and now 225.  Comparable curb weights.
• One pedal driving.  Awesome.  You can bring the car to a complete hold stop.  Couldn’t do that with the Tesla.  Only downside is you can’t turn this feature off in favor of creep.  They say it’s coming in a future download.
• Bi-direction energy flow not there yet but coming via a SW update soon.  Can’t currently use the car as a back-up power source for our home.  Key feature.  Looking forward to it SOON!
• Charging rate at home off a 240-volt outlet (NO wall charging unit) is acceptable but not as high as the Tesla.  I’m getting a rate of 18MPH v the Tesla of 22MPH.  I have not installed the wall charging unit yet and most likely will not.  The wall unit must be hard wired to the main electrical panel.  Rivian says you get 25 MPH with the wall unit.  I can live with 18MPH.
• The Rivian charging cable should have been made a few feet longer.  It’s much easier to back into a parking spot in our garage than to pull front in.  The charging port on the Rivian is front left.  This means a long distance from the outlet (on the wall perpendicular to the car when parked) to the charge port when backed in.  Does not reach.  Forcing me to park front in.
• Rivian does not include any useable free super charging.  They include one year of charging in their own network but the only location on the west coast is in Yosemite.  With my Tesla Model X, I got unlimited free charging for the life of the car in the Tesla network.  I have not yet had to charge the Rivian at any of the partner charging networks so can’t report on cost, speed, or availability.  I’m sure they will be fine.  For most of the time owning the Model X the Tesla network has been great.  Lately, with so many more cars shipped and, on the road, it’s showing signs of overload.  More and more out of service stations, more times I have had to wait for a station.  More frequently splitting charge rate with a car beside me.
• Super easy to get in and out.  Tons of leg room in both rows of seats.  Also, huge headroom.  Seats are extremely well designed ergonomically.  Long drives are no problem.
• Great sound system!  Best!!  Audio quality when talking on the phone also the best.  People on the other end cannot tell I’m in a car (Well Truck).  No built in XM Satellite Radio though.  I must stream it from my phone app.  Cheaper, no extra subscription but not as convenient.  I’m getting used to it.
• One interesting feature which I’m not sure of the actual value yet is what they call “gear guard”.  Essentially, this is the cameras remaining on while the vehicle is parked and when any camera senses motion it records the motion and stores it locally for when you return to the vehicle.  It’s supposed to be a security feature in case someone tries to steel your gear or break into the vehicle.  Until it becomes more widely known this feature exists and is running, I doubt it will serve as much of a deterrent.  It also comes with a downside.  While the cameras are running it drains the battery by around 8-10 miles of range every 24 hours.  This feature comes standard in the activated toggle position.  It took me a few conversations with Rivian support to figure out the connection between the battery drain I was experiencing and the Gear Guard feature.
• Great NAV system.  Not google maps like Tesla uses.  Must be their own.  Not sure if they OEM it from someone but it’s fabulous.
• The info-entertainment screen is set horizontally not vertically like Tesla and others.  Took a little getting used to but I like it better that way.  From an aesthetic point of view, I would rather it more “embedded” in the dash than set against the dash.  But that’s a very minor complaint.
• Blind spot monitoring and lane keep assist are excellent.  The Tesla did not have blind spot monitoring and its lane keep assist was almost useless.  Just created a slight vibration in the steering wheel when you veered out of your lane.
• One minor complaint I have which surprised me is that there is no traditional Glove Box under the dash in front of the front passenger.  You will need to find other places to put things that traditionally go in the glove box.  There is a deep center console storage area as well as flip down shallow storage things under each of the front seats.  Only one double pop out drink holder in the front and back.  Small drink containers only.
• Tons of outlets to run power to various things like phones, power tools etc.  3 120 Volt outlets.  I will be providing the power for my daughters up coming wedding.  Wireless phone charging pad (very slow).
• Very handy Air compressor for pumping up anything.  Water rafts, bike tires, car tires, scooter tires.  Works great!!  Nice long hose to reach the items around the truck.  Easy to use control panel so not to overinflate anything.
• I’m not a big off road, wilderness camper so can’t comment on my experience there.  But I’m sure those that are will be thrilled with all the well thought out attachments and standard built in features for off roading and wilderness exploring.
• The Rivian mobile app needs a lot of work.  Very much a version 1.0.  Very poor UX design and missing key capabilities like setting of charge capacity.  Tesla is miles ahead in their mobile app.  The Rivian mobile app does also serve as one key option which Tesla does not have.  Rivian offers three key options.  The mobile app, an actual key and then a card fob sort of thing.  I just use the mobile app.

There are many other options coming:

• I’m on the wait list for the Ford Mustang Mach-e, Ford F150 Lightning, Volvo SC40, Lucid (likely will pull off).  Our Chevy volt is now 9 years old and getting long in the tooth.
• There are many others coming.  Kia and Hyundai look to have solid offerings in the entry level price range.  GM has the Hummer and soon pick-up truck.  Porsche, BMW, Cadillac and Mercedes have their high-end sedans.  Volvo owned Polestar is out there.  VW and Audi also out with initial vehicles.  Lots of choices and more to come.  Tesla finally has competition!  Most of the top-quality options come with wait lists.

Don’t believe the media positioning of the 2018 tax reform – Not for a second

For those of you living over the top busy lives and only have time to read the headlines when it comes to the media coverage of the Trump 2018 Tax reform bill, you should consider hitting the pause button on your busy life and reading the following and clicking on the link at the end of this post for more detail in a very concise understandable form.

If many of you are like me and only have time to read the headline news, you might be thinking the 2018 tax code changes only benefit the “wealthy“.  For argument sake let’s use the top 20% of households as being “Wealthy”.  Seriously time to go below the headline and think again!  If you don’t you may end up paying significant fines when you file your 2018 tax returns resulting from under withholding or not paying enough in quarterly estimated taxes.  Not to mention the shock when your return is emailed to you, displays on the screen or prints and you’re paying double or triple what you paid last year.

Disclaimer:  I’m no tax expert.  Just an ordinary taxpayer who has read a bit below the headline and does his own tax returns!!

Yes, it’s certainly true that the corporate tax cuts set off two years of crazy equity appreciation in the stock market (some of which has been recently taken back).  Yes, it’s true only the wealthy benefit from this equity appreciation.  How positively this impacted your 2018 tax year is specific to your situation.  I don’t attempt to cover this here.

Let’s just look at a couple of the most meaningful changes that will certainly affect many if not all of you:

Property tax deduction:  Yikes!!

Previously, you could deduct the full amount of your property taxes paid for your primary residence and was vague on whether you could deduct property taxes on additional properties not considered rental properties.  At least one additional property, and more, depending on how you interpreted the deduction description.

Now, Property tax deductions fall in the category of SALT (state and local taxes) and are limited to $10K in qualifying deductions.  Any house in CA or any other high cost of living high tax state will likely be $1M plus in value and generate over $10K in property taxes alone.  And this does even consider the sales taxes and other local use taxes you used to deduct with no limit.  Take a quick look at your itemized deductions from last year and see what you deducted for this category, and I bet you’ll be shocked at the impact the difference between that number and $10K will be.  For many of you fortunate enough to own property worth more than $1M, this will hit hard.  Property taxes are going up and limits are coming down.  Not that hard for this number to be $50K and above.  If you deducted $50K in property taxes in 2017 you will pay $40K more in taxes for 2018.  Again, this only considers the property tax component of SALT.  It’s not exactly this simple but close enough for argument sake.

Personal exemptions, Gone!!  Used to be able to deduct $4K for each exemption.  Exemptions were for spouse and dependent kids.  Married with 3 kids in the house was $16K in deductions.  Bye bye!!  (Note; previously this did start to phase out for AGI above ~$300K, thus you may not have seen the full benefit)

Miscellaneous deductions.  If you pay a tax preparation service to do your taxes, Bye Bye!  No longer deductible.  Investment advisory fees.  That incredibly annoying fee you pay your wealth manager every year whether your account does well or not, bye bye!  No longer deductible.  Moving expenses, gone!  This can easily run into the $10’s of thousands in deductions gone.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume those of you reading this are still alive, so I won’t cover the improved Estate (death) tax limit to $11M.

If you sold a home in 2018 there’s good news and bad news.  Good news is your gains on the sale exempt from Federal taxes remained the same, but the bad news is you had to have lived there longer to qualify for the exemption. Went from 2 years to 5 years.

Tax brackets:  For AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) of roughly $200K to $400K went from a rate of 33% to 35%.  $400K to $500K went from 39.6% to 35%.  Over $500K went from 39.6% to 37%.  You figure where you fall.  If you earned $300K you pay $6K more in taxes.

So, what should I do?  You may be asking.  Not a lot you can do other than make sure you’ve had enough withheld or have paid enough in estimated taxes so you don’t get hit with fines which can also add to $10’s of thousands depending on how much you underestimated the taxes you now owe.

See the following links for a really thorough and concise review:

https://www.magnifymoney.com/blog/news/tax-reform-2018-explained/

https://www.schwab.com/resource-center/insights/content/investment-expenses-whats-tax-deductible

When Disaster Strikes

Preamble:

Over the past several months I’ve truly stopped counting the number of emails, text messages, phone calls and general comments received relating to the recent unanticipated and unprecedented Natural Disasters occurring around the US.  All coming from someone affected directly or indirectly, who also knows something about Jules.  One quote pretty much summed it up for most people.  This comment came from a friend who I had spoken to a year ago about what we were planning for Jules.  When we talked, to be completely honest, he just didn’t get it.  Nothing really stood out to him as a must have type of feature/benefit.  A couple weeks ago I heard from this person, tragically as he combed through the ash of his now completely destroyed Napa home “Kent, I totally get Jules now!”.  That’s all he said at the time.  We’ve since had a chance to sit down together, and he explained to me how he so wished Jules had been ready in time before Disaster struck him and his family.

Purpose of this post:

In this post, I will begin to break down many of the issues I’m hearing from people that relate to recovering in the aftermath of these natural disasters as well as other unexpected tragedies that can strike at any time.  I’m sure there are many other issues people are running into that may be less obvious, but still very important that I will continue to hear about and I will continue to share them here and provide ideas for what can and should be done now to help recover should another one strike.

Big Problems in life:

Let’s first make a change in terminology.  Let’s get away from calling these life events “Tragedies” or “Disasters” and let’s just label them “Big Problems”.  Sounds a little less dramatic.  Big problems in life come in many forms.  Not just from Natural Disasters like Flooding, Fire, Wind, Earthquake.  They also come in the form of major theft or damage to valuable personal property, identity theft, personal injury, major health conditions, legal problems, personal financial problems, etc.  The list goes on and on.

At this point in the post let me be very clear about a few things.  I’m by no means advocating for continual worrying about what might and could happen in life.  Nor am I advocating for trying to anticipate everything and anything that might happen and have a specific plan for that event when it occurs.  Life is just simply way to short and unpredictable for this kind of thinking and behavior.  Lastly, even if you follow all the following suggestions and take advantage of every feature Jules has to offer you still will not be completely insulated from the impacts of sudden and unexpected big problems.  It’s just not possible.

Having said all this there are numerous fundamental things you can do now that will ease the pain and aid in the recovery, in the event any of these big problems occur.  I will attempt to group them in logical categories:

• Record keeping
• Risk assessment and planning (aka Insurance)
• Process to update both items above on a regular interval
• Simple action plan in the event of a Big Problem occurring unexpectedly.

Now let’s get to it!

Record Keeping:

Fundamental to being able to minimize the damage and rapidly recover from any one of these big problems is to have good, up to date and accurate records of the state your life was in just prior to the big problem event occurring.  As you think of a backup of your computer in case the MS Windows Blue Screen of death appears, you must have the equivalent when it comes to everything else in your life.  This is also your opportunity to take advantage of living in the digital age and make this snap shot a digital snap shot.  Store it securely in the “cloud”, where it won’t get stolen, burned, flooded or blown away.  The following is a starter list of the types of things that should be stored in your digital vault:

• Any and all legally signed and executed documents.  Make sure you create an image of the full document and all signature pages.  Don’t just upload the original Word version with no signatures and don’t just upload an image of the signature pages without the agreement itself.  You will be surprised how many of these there are.  Get them all.  In particular be sure you have all your estate documents in good order.  Wills, Trusts, etc.  Make sure they’re current and signed (including notary where required by law).
• Any and all identification documents such as Birth Certificate, marriage certificates, death certificates and all government issued ID documents (i.e. passport, Driving license, military ID, etc.).  These all become much easier to replace if you have an image of the original.
• Ownership title documents.  Cars, houses, etc.
• Inventory of all high value possessions.  Include details like make/model/Serial number where available and appropriate.  Image of the item, purchase records (receipt), appraisals, authenticity certificate, etc.  Very important to understand, that if something is lost, stolen or destroyed, the burden to prove you owned it and what it is worth is on you when filing an insurance claim for recovery.  The more proof you can provide the better off you will be and the more likely you will reach a fair settlement.
• Memorabilia – This one has the least economic value but the highest personal value.  We’re talking about memories here.  Take images of as many items you plan on keeping for a lifetime as you possibly can.  Items that “when they’re gone they’re gone”.  Can’t be replaced.  Taking images can’t replace the item.  It can’t bring it back if it’s lost or destroyed, but it can preserve the memory.  Big one.

Risk assessment and planning (aka Insurance)

This process starts with asking yourself what are the biggest risks you face.  I call this a risk inventory.  Following are some examples but not intended to be comprehensive:

• Natural disasters based on where you live.  With climate change, these are changing.  Don’t just go by what has or hasn’t happened in the last 100 years.
• Risk of property theft, loss or damage.  Are you careful when it comes to leaving gas burners on or irons on.  How often does your iPhone screen crack?
• Liability risk – Teenage drivers in the house.  I realize all of you have the perfect teenagers.  I know I do.  Just in case your perfect teenager crashes the car and significant property damage or death is a result, recognize that while your teenagers and young adults are still carried on your insurance policies, their liability rolls up to you.
• Professional risk.  If you’re a doctor or lawyer you have malpractice liability risk as an example.  If you’re a professional athlete you have career ending injury risk.  Etc.
• Lifestyle risk.  Are you simply a risk taker in general?  Do you race dirt bikes as a hobby?  Do you ski only double black diamonds?  Skydiving?  Scuba diving? rock climbing?  You get the idea.

If after completing the risk inventory you have an “oh my god” moment, this might be a good time to make some changes to your risk profile before you go on to the next step.  Some of this is well within your control.

Net Worth Estimation

The next step is a rough estimate of your net worth (see earlier Blog regarding a detailed approach).  Pretty simple here.  If you don’t know what your worth and what comprises that worth, you will not be able to determine how to protect it.  Your net worth is simply calculated by adding up the value of everything you own and subtracting the value of everything you owe (mortgage, car loans, student loans, taxes, etc.).

Paying to limit your risk exposure

This is about insurance.  How much are you willing to pay every month/year to know that you have limited financial risk exposure.  You can insure nothing and simply “self-insure” assuming that the premiums you save by not insuring anything will aggregate over time and if you do lose something or break something then you can pay for it out of these accumulated funds.  You can insure “everything” to its maximum replacement cost.  This is the other end of the spectrum.  Very expensive to do this, but you will sleep solidly at night with the knowledge that “you’re covered” regardless of what happens.  99.9% of the population falls somewhere in between.  Where you fall in the spectrum is more of an emotional “feel” based analysis than a quantitative analytical kind of decision.  BUT, don’t make it without all the facts.  Be sure you really understand that with every decision you make in terms of how much to insure what your economic outcome will truly be under numerous event outcomes.  Don’t stick your head in the sand on this!!  Yes, it will likely still be an emotional decision where you want to be on this spectrum but make it knowing where you are placing yourself.  The following lists some types of insurance commonly available:

• Property insurance – Insure your home and its contents.  Normally required by the mortgage lender.  Includes some limited liability resulting from events related to the home.  See previous blog for details on what to look for here.
• Auto insurance – Insure the value of your car.  Includes some limited liability for events relating to the car.  Also required by any auto loan lender.
• Life insurance – Insure against losing your life.
• Additional liability (also known as umbrella) – Insures against liability claims made against you above and beyond the limits in your homeowners and auto policies.
• Medical, Dental, Vision and other health care related insurance.  Insures against the cost of staying healthy.
• State, local and federal disaster relief funds.  This one is a true wildcard in every sense of the word.  Yes these funds in theory, exist.  Would I want to count on them in the event of a natural disaster – NO.  I would suggest looking on this source of “insurance” as true upside surprise only.

The key point I’m making here is to determine where on the risk/cost/insurance spectrum you fall and make sure you take out the insurance that really places you on that point.  This can be much more complicated than you might think.  The insurance industry for 100’s of years has worked hard to make this as complicated as they can get away with for the average consumer.  In my attempt, not to be cynical I will stop short of telling you why they do this.  The insurance industry is so heavily regulated it’s not likely you will find material price differences between carriers for the same coverage.  It’s much more likely each one will package them very differently so as to make it almost impossible for you to compare against the competition.  This will be a key area of focus for Jules, to help you figure this out.

Process to update both items above on a regular interval

All of the above really does you very little good if you don’t invest time keeping it all current.  Let’s face it, as time goes on things change in your life.  Some big and obvious ones like adding a new child to the family, buying a new house, moving to a new part of the country, etc..  Some changes are not as obvious.  When your kids become teenagers, and start driving.  When the kids truly move out on their own and have their own insurance.  You can inherit wealth from deceased parents or grandparents.  Someone in the family comes down with a terrible illness and it becomes very expensive.  Your aging parent needs to move into a full care facility.  A member of the family runs into severe financial problems and you become the safety net.  Or, simply your attitude towards certain things changes over time.

Going back as a result of these and many more changes and reviewing your overall risk management plan is crucial to avoid big surprises when the big problems actually happen.

Lastly,

Simple action plan in the event of a Big Problem occurring unexpectedly

For the obvious high-risk events have a simple plan in place to “get through it” and limit the immediate damage:

• Be sure you have supplies to survive the appropriate amount of time (based on emergency)
• Be sure you have a communication plan while the event takes place and shortly thereafter.  Includes a place to meet.
• Have this all agreed and understood by immediate family and friends.
• Know where your gas shutoff is and how to shut it off.  If a special tool is required you must know where it is.
• Know where your water shutoff is and how to shut it off.  If a special tool is required you must know where it is.

Jules touches just about every aspect of what’s described above and oh by the way, this is only about 10% of everything Jules can do to help you manage your personal life and everything that is a part of it.

Tesla Model X update two. You need to be way up Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs

This update post is intended for a variety of audiences;  1)  Current owners of the Model X  2)  Anyone considering a model X, and 3)  All those of you who enjoy sneering at all those who took the plunge and bought one.  I hope you all consider this packed with useful, entertaining and realistic bits of info from over 10K miles of experience with one.

 

First let’s get right to the reference to Maslow in the title.  There’s something very soul searching that comes from driving a car capable of 0-60 MPH in 3.2 seconds and 50-100 in 2.5 seconds, that you spent a ridiculous amount of money on, but most of your long distance driving time is spent in the far right lane (you know that lane referenced in the signs posted that say “slower traffic keep right”) being passed continuously by every four cylinder car on the road.  To make it all even more humiliating the passengers in these cars are always looking at you like you should have your hazard lights on due to the obvious malfunction the car is experiencing.  Either that or they’re just outright laughing at you as they zip by, many times with a speed differential of at least 20 MPH.  This is all due to the inverse correlation of the speed your travelling and the range efficiency of the Model X and the spacing of the Supercharging stations along my most frequented trip route (SF Bay area to and from Central Oregon).  By my calculations, for every 5 MPH you drive above ~55 MPH you take roughly a 10% hit in range efficiency.  At 55 MPH you roughly get the published range (in the model X that’s 250 miles) per full charge.  Not counting the fact Tesla almost forces you to only charge to 80% of the capacity or 225 miles.  This to “preserve the battery life”.  Yikes!!  With charging stations positioned from 85 miles to 125 miles apart along major freeways like I5 in CA this leaves you either stopping at each one or trying to skip one and do the white knuckle drive hoping you have enough range and just sit in the right hand lane like your towing a 18 wheel shipping container, while watching the Prius’s and low end Korean cars zipping past you like you’re standing still.  If you’re not well up Maslow’s needs hierarchy you will be likely looking for the next bridge to just drive off and put yourself out of your misery.  Then try this trip with Kidney Stones and see how much fun it is.  Uh Huh!!

 

Speaking of the Super charging experience…

Last week when I was driving back from Oregon to SF I stopped at the charging station in Corning CA.  It was 109 degrees cool when I got out of the car and placed the charging connector into the car.  The connector had been resting in its holster in the shade.  When I returned 20 minutes later to pull it out and go on my way it was so hot (thanks to the electrical current and the 109 degree temps)  you literally could not touch it.  There were 4 of us at this bank of charging ports all looking at each other wondering what we’re going to do now.  We could wait until the sun goes down…  Even if you wrapped your shirt around the handle it still burned right through it.  Finally I went into the local restaurant and said to the owner “listen, there are 4 of us with Tesla’s parked at the charging ports and we can’t get the port connectors out of our cars.  Do you happen to have an oven mitt we can borrow”.  YES you guessed it this was Maslow moment number 2!!

Oh before I forget to mention these charging stations are wired in pairs (1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, etc.)  the 170 miles per 30 minutes charge (claimed by Tesla) only goes to the combined pair of 1A and 1B.  So, if cars are parked and using both 1A and 1B simultaneously you’re only getting 85 miles per 30 minutes charge.  Try finding that little fine print detail anywhere on the Tesla website.  I would guess 90% of the Tesla owners I chat with while our cars are charging are unaware of this.  They just concluded the charging port was malfunctioning.  As more Teslas fill the roads and the stations get busier this will become more of a problem.

 

Now let’s get back to what the Tesla Model X is and isn’t…

Everything it shares in common with the Model S and with SpaceX is well tested , brilliant and works as advertised.  This includes most of the really breakthrough aspects to the Car (calling it a “Car” is a real stretch) like the engine, the handling, the braking, the seats, the panoramic glass, the auto-pilot/cruise control, the air conditioning, etc..  It’s all the little things that you’ve grown accustomed to after 20+ years of driving high end “cars” that are woefully missing or lacking.  I’ve experienced over 25 issues just with exterior moldings, fittings, weather stripping, etc.  To me the exterior of the car looks like it was hand assembled as an 8th grade shop project.  Pretty much anywhere two outer body pieces come together they do so with no alignment.  Looks like someone just eyeballed each piece and where it should be positioned and attached it.  Many of these have now been fixed after two separate trips into the factory for about a week each trip.  Some still remain outstanding while we wait for re-engineered parts to come from suppliers that meet the spec.  Another very annoying feature missing is any way to hard wire connect media devices to the Car stereo system.  No Aux cord!!  They expect all media devices to connect via Bluetooth.  This means every time you have a passenger who wants to connect their iPhone it has to be paired via Bluetooth then I need to remove it from the paired list later on (more on why this removal needs to happen later).  There is no way to simply plug it in quickly and hit play.  There are USB ports all over the interior of the car but are only good for charging or if you happen to have a thumb drive (do any of you carry your music around on a thumb drive) with music you can play the music.  Really!!  Also the car microphone was located assuming the driver was sitting about 12 inches away.  When the driver seat is all the way back the microphone works very poorly and the fidelity is not sufficient to leave messages on most voicemail recorders or communicate via speech to text conversion apps like Cortana or Siri.

The next major area lacking is seating capacity for 6 adults.  Just can’t be done if the adults are all 5’10” and above.  Or everyone is willing to sit side saddle on the middle and rear row seats with their legs hanging out into the middle isle.  I have the 2 captains chairs configuration in the middle row.  Thank goodness I chose that configuration or there would be absolutely now way to get anyone with legs into the back row seats.  Maybe that’s why they did not configure any arm rests in the middle row towards the middle of the car. 🙂  In fact to be honest it seems like the back row of seats was an afterthought.  Moving the back row of seats up and down is as inconvenient and problematic as I’ve ever seen.  Getting them to drop down from the upright position is fine once you learn the double click feature on the release button.  It’s getting them back up that’s the back breaker.  There is virtually no way to do it from the back.  You have to come around to the front and open the Falcon door and do it from there.  Opening the falcon wing doors is always an experience.  No telling what’s going to happen or how long it will take or how many people will come watch.  Sometimes they sense obstacles in the way that aren’t there and just start acting like a 2 year old that will not accept “NO” for an answer.  They simply won’t open or close.  Then there are the times they don’t sense an obvious obstacle like a human being (my daughter for one) and they open anyway pinning my daughter up against the car next to us.  Yikes! hate it when that happens.  That drew some ooo’s and ahhh’s from the crowd to say the least.  All the doors operate exclusively via electric motors.  No manual option.  To initiate the door opening process you have to press on the external embedded chrome strip in the door.  you need to press right in the middle and hard.  My mother is not strong enough to depress the strip enough to activate the door opening.  I’ve now taken to getting in the car first and opening the doors exclusively from the touchscreen.  After of course making sure everyone is clear of danger.  Not easy to do once you’re in the car.  I think you get the picture.  Once the doors are all open getting in and out is a breeze and very enjoyable.  Opening and closing all the doors safely is always an adventure to say the least.

Let’s quickly hit on the computer that sits at the heart of the electronics.  Last week I was noticing the NAV had drastically slowed down to the point it was issuing turn commands well after we had passed the turn off then taking 30 seconds or more to re-calculate the route and give us another turn command.  I called Tesla support only to find out the memory had filled up and was (like any computer) not able to run the major apps properly.  They said “well have you cleared the browser cache recently?”.  I said “what???”  Turns out I had left the on board browser on the ESPN site and it was continuously updating the PGA scores taking up more and more memory until it squeezed out the NAV.  It was then a Microsoft like experience.  Hold down the two wheel buttons simultaneously for 30 seconds to reboot the display, then go into the browser and delete the cache and make sure it was set to the Google start page.  Does this sound like something you would expect to do in a car??  Then I needed to hold down two other buttons simultaneously for another 30 seconds to reset the dashboard which runs off the same computer.  After all this the NAV was back in action.  By the way, overall I love the NAV.

I can’t finish this blog post without recounting the now infamous key story.  When I was first delivered the car and handed the keys I have to say my reaction was “REALLY!!”.  this is the key.  It’s a cheap plastic model replica of a Model X.  Looks shiny and cool but also looks like it will last about one or two good drops as you get out of the car or leap for your daughter as the falcon Wing is about to pin her against the car next to you.  anyway, I was just finishing up a round of golf up in Central Oregon a month ago on a very hot day and walked up to the car and stuck my hand in the pocket where I had put the key only to pull my hand out with a fist full of 12 pieces into which the key had broken into.  As the gravity of this situation sunk in it was as I call it a “Martian moment”.  OMG!  How am I going to grow enough potatoes to fix this problem.  I have no spare key up here in Oregon.  I called the Tesla roadside assistance and they said they can unlock the car remotely but aren’t legally allowed to start it.  They said just use the iPhone Tesla App and you can start it and run it until you get a new key.  Welllll, this would be great except as all of you know by now I don’t have an iPhone and even this will not motivate me to get one.  Hmm.  Well after more contemplation on how I would grow all these potatoes we came up with the idea that one of the kids working behind the desk in the pro shop who had an iPhone would download the App, I would give him my login credentials and he would be on call to start my car when needed until I got a new key.  It worked!!  Got the new key the next day and to this day the kid in the pro shop has not decided to track my car and quietly remove it from my garage never to be seen again.  I hope he does not read this blog and get any new ideas.

 

Last major issue of note is the Spare tire.  Rather the lack of one.  I realize they’re not the only car to ditch the spare tire so maybe this one is in the trend line of where cars are going.  I spend enough time on stretches of road in areas of the country that have no cell coverage that riding with no spare tire just gives me the Willies.  So I bought an extra wheel.  Not knowing how huuuge (as D Trump says) this thing was.  With the two rear seats down it literally takes up the whole back area leaving no room for anything else.  So I ended up buying a spare tire rack to mount on the hitch I included in my configuration (fortunately as it was not intended for this purpose).  Bought the following rack (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009YIE1O/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and extender (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BROATE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) since without the extender the rear lift-gate does not clear the attached wheel.  I then bought 3 quarter inch bolts and first bolted them to the rack in the proper position to be able to drop the wheel on, then set the wheel on them and used locking nuts to bolt the wheel on the rack and leave the whole thing assembled when I take it on and off when needed.  Actually works very well.  Haven’t had to use it yet and hopefully won’t have to but my mind is at peace…

 

So where does all this leave me in terms of my enthusiasm to carry out this early adopter journey.  Well, I’ve taken some body blows and my ego has definitely been put in a new place but I’m soldiering on.  Tesla remains committed to making everything right.  August 10th I’m taking it in again for the third time and they seem committed to fixing the remaining dozen or so issues.  I really think we’re getting to the end of the long trail of fixable issues.  I’ve had it for 6 months and have over 10K miles on the car.  There will undoubtedly be some things I will just need to live with and work around but the technology advancements are still so overwhelmingly breakthrough I feel I have to get to the end of this journey and see where it drops me off.

 

Stay tuned..

 

My Tesla Model X ownership journey begins with 600 mile drive from Portland, OR to Lafayette, CA. What a ride!!!

Okay, let me start this by saying it’s no coincidence Elons’ other company SpaceX so prominently features the letter “X” as does now the new Model X car (if you can really call it a car).

 

Having pre-ordered my Model X in January of 2013, I picked it up Tuesday of this week.  Yes, that’s a little later than originally expected.  Well, maybe a lot later than originally expected, but that’s all water under the bridge now.  I have it now!!  I picked it up in the Portland Oregon delivery location and proceeded to drive it straight to Lafayette.  What follows are my first impressions.

Impression 1

As I said above the Model X is really not a car by any modern definition.  It’s much more of a cross between a space capsule and a super computer.  I’ve never actually sat in a space capsule before but sitting in the driver seat of the Model X must be pretty close.  The first thing you immediately notice is the massive panoramic windshield that essentially surrounds you.  Along with the over sized side windows you have a full 180 degree view of what’s in front of you and a 90 degree view upwards to what’s above you.  It’s really hard to describe the feeling this creates.  The sense you’re really travelling through space not driving along a road is then fully realized when you step on the accelerator.  OMG!  60 MPH to 100 MPH in a second.  I’m not kidding.  And as smooth as you’ve ever felt.  Simply feels like a rocket booster just fired.  Then add to this the auto pilot mode where you’re just sitting there being completely controlled by NASA and you get the full picture.  The driver seat is the most comfortable seat of any kind I’ve ever sat in.  Tesla should consider going into the furniture business next.  The 10 hour drive from Portland to Lafayette went by in a snap and I arrived feeling no car weariness I’ve grown so used to in the past.  With all the controls managed from the massively over sized iPad mounted in the center of the console this completes the feeling of being in a space capsule being remotely controlled by a super computer.  It’s certainly not a feeling everyone will immediately appreciate and it takes some getting used to for sure, but wow! it’s nothing like anything I’ve experienced before.

The picture below gives you a little sense for the panoramic view.

Impression 2 (Auto Pilot)

The Tesla auto pilot is truly a game changer and you can feel it’s the way all cars will operate in the near future.  The trip from Portland to Lafayette covered roughly 600 miles.  I would estimate I covered at least 550 of those miles in auto pilot mode.  You just double tap the cruise stick and you’re in AP mode.  Look Ma, no hands, no feet!!  You just sit there and let the car take over.  To change lanes you just hold down the turn signal stick until the car decides it’s safe to change lanes and executes the lane change.  You set the speed you ideally would like to go with no obstacles in your way and the car will always return to that speed when there’s open road ahead.  As it comes up on a car in front it comfortably slows the car to a nice safe distance back.  Honestly it does a much better job of this than if I were handling the controls.  When changing lanes it detects cars in front, behind or directly on your side in the way and speeds up or slows down to slot you comfortably into the desired lane and then executes the lane change.  First tips back to Tesla.  It dos not do a great job factoring in the speed differential of a car approaching in the lane you want to merge into.  In other words if a car is approaching rapidly in the other lane from behind the car does not deal with that nuance well.  Second tip is it would be nice to not have to manually hold down the turn signal stick to get this done.  If you hit the turn signal all the way you don’t have to manually hold it but it also does not turn off once the lane change has been executed.  You still have to manually shut it off.

Be aware!!  It’s not perfect.  You do need to be paying attention.  In particular when driving over bridges or overpasses where the surface of the road changes and the lane lines either disappear or change in style.  Numerous times when this happened the Telemetry got confused and either shut off completely or simply hesitated too long for my comfort, to regain it’s lock.  When this happens it does send out an audible warning but then again there are a lot of audible warnings going off regularly.  One in particular is if you have your hands off the wheel for more than a few minutes it beeps at you to be sure you’re paying attention.  If you don’t put your hands on the wheel at least for a few seconds it beeps again and then with the third warning it starts slowing the car down.  Bottom line it really does want you paying attention and not taking a nap or migrating to the back seat.  Even taking into account the need to “pay attention” I still found it 100 times more relaxing than having to be actively driving the car.

Impression 3 (Handling and performance)

Simply off the charts!!  The car feels locked to the road.  Handles better than any car (not to mention SUV) I’ve ever driven.  I really have no need to get off the line from a standing stop to 60 MPH in 3 seconds so I didn’t even try it to test it.  I do have a need to get from 55 to 90 quickly when driving on two lane country highways in Central Oregon.  Getting past 2 back to back 18 wheel tractor trailers climbing a long 4% grade going 45 MPH no longer places my heart in my throat while I wonder weather I can beat the on coming truck back into my lane before we collide head on.  In fact this can even be accomplished in Auto Pilot mode (not factoring in the on coming truck in the opposite direction).  Between the handling, the acceleration when needed and knowing all the engineering that’s gone into the car in terms of safety features you really do feel 100% safer than in any other car.  I now believe Elon when he says the NHTSA is now considering a 6 star rating just for the Tesla Model X.  Simply “off the charts”.

 

Impression 4 (Range and Super charging)

The published range per charge is 250 miles for the P90D.  If you drive around 60 MPH and are on flat ground this can be done.  Add speed and hills and it drops off pretty quickly.  Thankfully the NAV and the frequency of Super charging stations goes a long way to relieving the range anxiety feeling.  The NAV is fabulous!  I did have one reminder moment that at the heart of this car is a computer.  I was down to about 7 miles left and pulling off to go find the super charging station when the screen on the control system went completely blank.  Think of the blue screen of death from Microsoft days in yesteryear.  In this case it’s the Tesla grey screen of death.  Yikes!  7 miles left and no way to find the charging station.  Thankfully it just rebooted and came back in a couple minutes and all was restored and good.  Phew!!  The charging stations are all situated within .25 of a mile from the freeway and mostly on the property of a motel surrounded by restaurants.  I stopped at 4 along the way.  2 of the 4 had 4 stalls for charging and one was an 8 stall station.  Never more than one other car charging.  Charging time ranges from 40 minutes to get from 7 to 220 or less to just get enough to comfortably make it to the next station.  All calculations are done by the NAV as to where to stop next and at what speed you need to drive to make it to which stop.  Between the super charging stations there are also trickle charging options if you completely blow it.  I would say having to pull off and charge added 45 minutes total to the trip, was free and forced me to stop and stretch anyway.  The 45 minutes does not count the time spent talking with the various people that would immediately surround the car wanting to ask questions or just stare at it.  When using the car to just get around locally they strongly recommend you only charge to 90% of he 250 capacity to preserve battery life.  In fact the car will not allow you to charge past 220 unless you override the standard setting and claim “trip” status.  then it will allow the full charge to 250.  In 72 hours from when you change the status to Trip it will default back to 90% limit.

Impression 5 (Comfort features)

Love the climate control system.  Really does filter the air to pure form.  Very comfortable at all times.  Works instantly when you turn it on.  Does impact range slightly so may not want it running if you’re cutting it tight to the next charge station.  Sound system is fabulous.  Center console in the front is a huge upgrade to the Model S.  Lots of cup holders and storage.  Great ergonomic positioning of the arm rests to go with all time most comfortable seat.  Enormous leg room.  I didn’t even have to push the seat all the way back to get the needed leg room.  Great feeling steering wheel when you’re actually needing to use it.  Getting in and out of the car was fabulous.  Just drop in and swing out.  you may recall this what forced me to this car in the first place.  100% satisfaction.  The gull winged rear doors create super easy access to both the second and third rows of seats.  I got the two captains seats in the middle row so you can access the 3rd row either by climbing in front of the seat in the middle row and then walking back between the two middle seats or leaning the second row seat forward and walking directly back to the third row seat.  Easy both ways.  Comfortably seats 6 large adults.  Tremendous storage area.  the front storage area easily stores two sets of golf clubs or equivalent.  Even with the 3rd row of seats upright the rear storage area will store at least 4 sets of golf clubs.  In addition, the 3rd row of seats easily folds down flat creating unlimited storage (for my needs that is).  Also comes with a trailer hitch standard to tow or just attach bike or more storage racks.  No roof rack option due to gull winged doors.

Impression 6 (Not perfect!)

Tesla still clearly has some manufacturing or design issues to sort out.  I had to ruthlessly badger my delivery specialist to release the car to me.  They had been holding the car  in the “inspection” phase of production for almost 2 months.  I kept saying how long can it possibly take to inspect one car.  He kept saying they wanted it to be “perfect” when I took delivery.  As you would expect the first thing I did when I got home was to wash it and see how it did or see how well the inspection process went.  Well there were no less than 6 issues I noticed with the car upon my inspection.  These issues ranged from metal and plastic molding coming apart to a visibly poor welding job to poor choice of plastic material exposed to weather elements that got spotted and stained badly.  All fixable and will get fixed as they debug the manufacturing process.

 

Overall I could not be happier.  Love it!!

In case you missed the Tesla Model X launch event last night

It was truly a remarkable event last night!!  In numerous ways, both plus and minus.  I received my invitation about 5 days before the event as a result of being an early reservation holder.  Yes, I’ve been on the reservation list for over 3 years.

I tried very hard to convince myself to buy the S but in the end I just could not get comfortable with the way the ergonomics of the driver seat and cabin were engineered.  It was much improved over the roadster but still not something I could see myself getting in an out of with my 6’3″ frame and proportionately even longer legs.  When you sat in the driver seat with the seat all the way back the side cross bar support steel beam essentially aligned to my mid thigh.  To get out of the car you needed to scootch forward to the very front of the seat, then swing your legs out and then lift yourself out while not hitting your head in the process.  If I’m going to spend this kind of money it needs to be much easier than that.

So that’s why I’m here.  I’ve been told the main focus of the Model X was to fix the ingress and egress issues for all passengers (driver and rear seat passengers alike).  So let’s take a step back now and walk you through the whole event experience and my impressions of Tesla the company, the Model X itself and Elon himself.

Lets start out with the truly UGLY!  As an invited “special” guest and in theory one of Tesla’s most valued customers to be I honestly felt more like one of those cows you see off I5 on your way from SF to LA just waiting to be slaughtered.  The published agenda for the program was as follows:

—  6:00PM parking lots open

—  7:00PM Doors open

—  7:30PM  The program begins (Elon’s presentation and the official first presentation of the car)

—  8:00PM  Test drives begin

Reality:

1. The event staff directing traffic did not even know which side of the building the guests were going to enter and trust me the Tesla Factory is a big building.  This lead to mass confusion as to where you were to park and line up.
2. Parking lot did not open until more like 6:45.  People were left for 45 minutes standing around outside a closed sliding steal gate door to the parking lot.  Most people like myself by this point had parked elsewhere and walked to the entrance.
3. Once the gate opened people and cars started streaming into the lot and you were ushered into an area where you lined up for your badge and then lined up again to wait to get into the building.  First image of that poor cow on the I-5 freeway begins to emerge.
4. The doors finally open to the event itself around 7:45PM.  By this time I would estimate there are at least 5,000 people in the line.  We’re all then lead into a section of the factory meant to maybe accommodate 500 people comfortably.  Mostly open floor but with a main stage and a few other side stage areas along with several large projection screens.  All this lead to most people figuring this was where the event itself was most likely going to take place.  We were all kept in the section of the factory for 45 minutes, crammed in like sardines wondering what and where is this event going to take place.
5. 8:30 strikes and now they open 4 small tunnel areas through which these 5K people were all ushered through leading to an adjacent section of the factory where the event was really going to take place.  20 more minutes of feeling like a sardine in the new factory area when Elon finally comes on and the car shows up.  It’s now about 8:45, the program was supposed to have started at 7:30 and most of us have been standing in lines and bullpens crammed together for over 2 hours.  Elon’s pitch and the car better be something really special!!

Well I guess the bottom line is Tesla seems to be trying to create an Apple-like cult culture around the company, only geared towards those of us that are struggling to remember what it was like to be a teenager.  Funny to see so many 50 and 60 somethings behaving like teenagers and tolerating this treatment.  I guess since I did stay and tolerate it to hear the pitch and see and feel the car it makes me one of those.  OK OK.

Now onto Elon’s pitch and the car.  The pitch was good.  Not Steve Jobs great, but good.  Numerous loud rounds of applause and ooh-ing and ahhh-ing.  Note: always a standing ovation due to the fact we had were all standing anyway and had been for almost 3 hours.

Elon’s emphasis in his pitch:

1. Safety.  Safest SUV on the road by a wide margin.  Claims to be forcing the NHSTB to add a 6 star rating to their rating system.  Elon clearly very proud of this aspect of the car.  He spent about 1/3rd of his entire presentation on this.
2. Performance engineering.  Not much new v the S but still way ahead of any of the competition.  0-60 in 3.2 Seconds with an SUV.  Still tops the Porsche 911.
3. Ingress and egress comfort when accessing all seating positions in the Car.  Mission accomplished for the driver!!  That’s what I was looking for.
4. Practical and functional use.  Tremendous amount of storage capacity, can tow up to 5K pounds, comes with a utility hitch for bikes and skis, etc.

Now onto the car/SUV/Rig itself.  It’s brilliant in every way!!

1. Most important to me I fit perfectly in the Driver’s seat and can get in and out just as easily if not more easily than I do in our Lexus RX450H.  In all honestly the driver’s seat is the most comfortable seat/chair/couch or even bed, I’ve ever sat in or on.  I’m not sure I can tell you exactly why or how they did it, they just did.  Brilliant!!
2. Range is 257 for the standard P90 and 250 for the P90 ludicrous.  The straight P90 gets from 0-60 in 4.8 seconds v the Ludicrous in 3.2 seconds.  The range is less than the S by around 10%.  Not bad given the extra weight and the worse aerodynamics that go along with the larger body style.  They had to keep the standard side view mirrors.  It had been rumored they were going to side view cameras only.  My guess is this was due to not getting the needed regulatory approvals.  I doubt it was a technology issue.
3. Safety.  Simply off the charts.  The NTHSB star rating system essentially measures the probability of being severely injured or killed in a high speed frontal or side collision. One star is 30%, 2 star 25%, 3 star 20%, 4 star 15% and five star (the highest they go) is 10%.  The Model X came in at 6%.  The next best SUV on the market was rated above 10%.  Remember this does not count all the collision avoidance technology in the car.  Just amazing what it can do in terms of detecting dangerous situations and automatically adjusting to avoid the danger.
4. Safety – Air quality.  Elon takes great pride in the air filtration system in the car.  In fact they’ve even added a button to max the filtration they call the bio-weapon defense button.  Claims it filters “everything” out of the air you breathe including all spores and viruses.  He showed off a chart of 8-10 of the worlds major cities and what your increased life expectancy would be if you drove the X for the rest of your life.  Needless to say he expects to sell a lot of these in Beijing!!
5. Comfort and practicality.  Easy access to all seats was a major priority and they accomplished it.  I already covered the driver.  The gull winged doors were a key component to this.  I really don’t think they did it just because it was cool looking.  It took the gull winged doors around 5 seconds to fully open and the same to close.  With the doors all the way up and the push button controls to slide the middle seat forward you can easily get into and out of all passenger seats in the back.  The seats are all amazingly comfortable and practical.  They’re mounted more like airplane seats with room underneath to slide feet underneath and store backpacks.  The middle row of seats is 3 full and complete seats.  Not the half strange middle seat you get with all other SUVs.  While I was waiting my turn to try the driver seat (over an hour) at one point there were 7 people in the car all over 6 feet and all fit comfortably.  Not sure I would want to do a four drive to Bandon Dunes like this but otherwise everyone fit nicely.  With the gull winged doors you cannot mount a roof rack so they offer instead a utility rack that is mounted from the hitch in the back that can carry 6 bikes and skis or snow boards.  Looked very practical to me.  The storage capacity even with all 7 seats in place was amazing.  The rear storage area goes down deep in a vertical direction.  Looked to me like you really could store golf clubs vertically, it’s that deep.  The horizontal depth is not great.  Maybe only 18-20 inches.  I did not measure it.  In terms of width I would say it’s as wide if not a bit wider than my RX450.  Again, I was not able to measure it.  The front storage area seems to be much larger than the S to me.  Easily fit a double baby stroller plus a couple shopping bags .  If you take out the back row of seats you massively increase the capacity.  Looked easy to do but I was not able to do it or see it done.  With the third row of seats removed I would expect it easy to store skis, snow boards and bikes inside.  Someone asked me last week to see if vacuuming up breadcrumbs would be easy.  A snap.  Very easy.  One really cool feature is the automatically opening driver door when you approach and then once you’re in the seat it automatically closes.  Also, the gull winged doors have sensors (not visible eternally) that detect objects in their way like a low garage ceiling and will adjust the pattern of the opening to be sure not to make any contact.  I assume this same technology is in the driver door but did not hear it said or saw it demonstrated.  The massive glass windscreen is also amazing.  Gives you an amazing panoramic view.  The glass looks permanently tinted and there is a visor mounted to the side that swings down and over to block specific sunlight or glare
6. 
7. Functional specs – None provided.  No pricing detailed or timing on deliveries.

Overall summary:

1. The Car/SUV is perfect!
2. Tesla has done a great job designing and engineering it in every way.
3. Elon is a Steve Jobs category visionary.  Not as motivating a speaker but just as visionary and bold.
4. The event itself leaves a lot to be desired.  The staff was completely unprepared for the event.  Trying their best but completely in the dark on virtually everything.  To actually get the promised test drive I’m sure many people waited around to the wee hours of the morning.  Heck the way it was going they may still be there.  There were people there from as far away as Sydney Australia.  Many people came long distances to be there.  Very cult like feeling but completely different to the Apple enthusiasts in virtually every other way.

The dreaded Colonoscopy!

Okay, we’re going a little off topic on this one but I felt it worthwhile to recount my experience last week should any of you be dragging your feet on this.

As is the case with many of us, it took one of my childhood friends putting this procedure off too long to get me sufficiently motivated to get it done.  It was the shock factor that woke me up to do it.  In my friend’s case by the time he went in for the scan, his colon cancer had progressed to the point he is now going through Chemo/Radiation before surgery.  Yes, that’s before surgery!  Then the surgery, then most likely more Chemo/Radiation.  He pushed me to do it now and not put it off.  I’m 54!

With no family history of colon cancer you should not wait past 50.  With history, much earlier.  Consult your doctor.

The reason for even writing about this procedure is the real shock of it all is how SMALL a deal it really is.  As a comparison, I would rather a Colonoscopy than have a cavity filled.  It’s that routine and pain free.

The following is my experience:

1. Normal visit to my Primary care physician December 6th.  He says “get it done” and gives me the number to contact NCGA (his recommendation for who to do it).
2. I call NCGA and schedule an initial visit.  Most of you will not even need an initial visit.  I did because I’m on Coumadin (thanks to United Airlines)
3. Initial visit to NCGA December 18th lasts 10 minutes.  Procedure scheduled for January 18th.  (Yesterday.  Yes, it’s fresh in my mind).
4. Starting January 12th I go off the Coumadin.
5. Starting December 16th at 5PM no more food.  Just clear liquids.  I get a little bit hungry.  Okay, well a lot hungry.
6. 5PM on January 17th take one bottle of Suprep (no worse tasting than
   Alka Seltzer cold medicine) mixed with 16 ounces of water followed by two more 16 ounce glasses of water.  All takes 3 minutes.
7. The next two hours are not pretty but as long as you have a clear path to a bathroom and nothing important to do it’s just not a big deal.  The desired reaction from the Suprep only lasts for about 2 hours.  Other than being hungry everything else returns to normal.
8. 5AM January 18th, take another bottle of Suprep and repeat the steps above.  Again, no big deal.  By 7AM I was back to a normal day.
9. 9AM onward until the procedure no food or drink.  Yes, I’m still hungry!  But I’ve been promised all I can eat Pizza by 5PM.  I can do this!
10. Arrive for the procedure at 2PM.
11. Taken back for prep at 2:30
12. IV inserted at 2:45.  Drugs injected at 2:55 (twilight Anesthesia)
13. Procedure done at 3PM.  Takes 15 minutes.  One small Polyp removed.
14. Out of there by 3:45
15. On the basketball court in my daughter’s school parent game by 4:15
16. Chowing down the all you can eat pizza by 5:15.
17. Just finished my normal gym workout this morning.
18. Absolutely no side effects.  One bonus, I lost 7 pounds!

Key message:  Absolutely no excuses.  Do it!!

New tech tips from recent experience

Firstly, my apologies for the long delay between Blog posts.  I’ve literally received 100’s of complaints.

In this Blog:

• Home WiFi Networking
• My latest Apple disaster and a major tip for getting inside the Mac.
• Blu-Ray note

Let’s start with Home Networking

Lately I’ve been getting numerous complaints from inside the family and out, that usually  takes the form of  “The Internet has stopped working DAD!!” or “I’m getting this weird Timeout message in my browser DAD!” or “it says the printer is offline DAD!”.  Somehow the verbal emphasis is always on the word DAD, like it’s obviously my fault.  Any of this sound familiar?  Oh and by the way the same quotes above come from outside the house as well just substituting the word “Kent” in for “Dad”.  Same verbal emphasis on Kent, again of course like it’s my fault.

Okay, when this happens the problem quickly becomes determining where the problem is.  Is it with the WiFi network device you’re using?   The router it’s connecting to, the Internet access modem or maybe the device itself is busted?  Who knows.

My home network is as follows;  We use Comcast for all three (Internet, TV & Phone) so we have a Comcast Cable modem piping the Internet into the house.  The Cable Modem is then wired directly to an 8 Port Cisco router.  From that router run 8 Ethernet cables to various spots in the house.  Connected to those 8 Ethernet connections are the following;  2 WiFi Access points, one WiFi Apple Time Capsule (UGGHH!), one powerline connector to connect to our Solar energy system to record stats on energy generation and usage and one directly to a laser printer.  Devices connected via WiFi to the various WiFi receivers are the following;  5 Apple Macs (only one with a cracked screen right now), 3 Apple iPads, anywhere between 1 and 5 iPhones (anywhere between 1 and 3 with cracked screens at any given time), one Lenovo laptop (Yes, that’s mine and yes it’s the only one that works all the time), one multifunction HP printer/scanner/fax, and one XBox.  Sounds like a mess doesn’t it but it actually works 99% of the time.

When it doesn’t work…

Firstly, you can be sure that if it’s not fixed immediately the world is going to end!!  Just like the Mayans predicted 🙂

My experience is that when anything that could be related to the network is not working the following is the easiest way to fix it for sure (Well with 99% confidence):

1. Go around to all the networking devices (including the Cable modem or DSL Modem, the Router and all WiFi access points) and unplug them from the power source.  Be sure to also remove the backup battery from the Cable Modem if it has one.  If you have phone service from the Internet access provider it will have one.
2. With them all unplugged start to plug them back in but STOP!  They must be plugged back in the following order.  Very important!
3. Start with the Cable modem or DSL modem along with the backup battery if you previously removed it.
4. Then start moving your way from the middle to the edge of your network
5. Next plug in the Router
6. Then plug in all your WiFi access points
7. Now reconnect to your WiFi hot spots and test.  Most devices will automatically reconnect.
8. This routine should fix 99% of the problems.  If it doesn’t call your internet provider and see if there’s an outage.  If no outage you may well have a hardware problem with one of the devices in your network.  Since hardware rarely fails (unless of course if it’s an Apple product) I will not attempt to delve into how to determine which bit failed.  You’re on your own from there.
9. Note:  more than 50% of the time I find the problem is local to the WiFi access point device and simply power cycling that device will fix the problem.  Call this the quick and dirty fist thing to try.
10. Even if you’re not having any problems this set of steps above should be done every 3 to 6 months just to shake out the gremlins that build up over time in a network.  Sort of like the need to re-boot the computer even when it’s not having any problems, once in awhile.

Now lets move on to the latest Mac disaster in our house and key learning from it.  

One of my daughters started experiencing “funky” issues with her MacBook Pro.  First it was just an overall sluggishness in how the Apps performed and then the key moment was when she could no longer search using the finder.  Searching for even the most obvious phrases that normally would have returned 100’s of files found, was not finding any files.  In hindsight this was a telling symptom of some sort of corruption.  Anyway, she just powered ahead grumbling until the moment of death occurred.  The grey screen of death!  Not to be confused with the Microsoft “blue screen of death” which never occurs anymore.  The grey screen of death occurs when you restart the Mac and it stops at the screen with Apple logo in the middle and the little spinning thing down below.  When you see this you assume some big new update is installing and you just wait it out for awhile.  If you are doing updates you should wait this out for a couple hours before concluding it’s the “Grey screen of death”.  Once you conclude its the grey screen of death you can do as I did and either call Apple phone support or schedule an appointment at the local apple store genius bar (hear in the Bay Area takes at least 5 days advance notice to get an appointment.  Gee, I wonder why that is?).

After running numerous secret key sequence tests all the Apple geniuses concluded the hard drive had failed and would need to be replaced.  They referred us to 3 third party companies that might be able to save the data.  Me being the never say die sort that I am would not accept this for an answer as my daughter sitting in front of me put it “This can’t be!”.  “Tell me it isn’t so!”  I’ll cut a long story short of how I got to this point but here is the sequence of tasks I used to ultimately return the Mac to it’s good as new state:

1. Start by holding down the power button until it powers off.
2. Then depress the Command and “R” keys simultaneously and hold then down continuously.  (thought all the Apple adds convinced you only Microsoft had ctrl-alt-del kind of stuff…)
3. Press the power button to turn on the Mac.
4. The grey screen of death will come on.  Just wait still holding the two keys down until the disk utility menu comes up.  This may take up to a minute or 2.  If it does not come up you likely do have a hardware problem.
5. Once the Disk Utility comes on screen select the Mac HD drive and click on “repair”.  Hopefully this utility will run to completion and repair the issue.  If it finishes with no problems it will prompt you to restart the computer.  Restart the computer and see if it boots to the desktop screen and runs normally.  If the repair routine fails for any reason just run it again and again until hopefully it completes with no errors.  This is the secret trick.  Often it does the repair in increments.  The apple tech following the onscreen trouble shooting DB will tell you it’s a hardware problem if the repair utility fails initially.
6. If, when you restart the computer it returns to the grey screen of death then repeat step #1 & #2 but this time (assuming you have run the repair utility with no failure notice of any kind) select re-install the OS rather than repair the disk from the disk utility menu.  Begin the OS installation process.  This may take several hours depending on Internet access speed.  The computer will be re-installing from a download site.  Once this process completes restart the computer again and see if you get to the desktop and resume normal operation.
7. If, once again you’re back at the grey screen of death you have bigger problems than I can help you solve.  Either you have software corruption problems beyond the OS or you really do have a hardware problem and will need to replace the hard drive.

Now on to the Blu-Ray note

I discovered recently (maybe all of you knew this already) but the Blu-Ray standard has changed in the last 3 years and I assume it happened quite recently.  We have Samsung Blu-Ray players purchased 3 years ago.  Recently purchased Blu-Ray discs no longer play properly on them.  I suspect this problem is more widespread than just Samsung.  The fix is to upgrade the firmware on your Blu-Ray player.  Yikes!! I said when I heard this.  It actually turned out to be much easier than it initially appeared.  If you are experiencing the same problem I describe then follow these steps:

1. Find out the make and model number of the player in question.
2. Go to the support site for the manufacturer of that player and find the download for the firmware upgrade
3. Download it to your computer and copy the file to a thumb drive.
4. Take the thumb drive and plug it into the USB port on the player and follow the instructions on the display or on the TV and in a few minutes it will do the upgrade.  Make sure there is no disk in the player when you do this and that the player is powered on.
5. Alternatively you could wait  a few more years for all video content to come via the web and there’s no further need for DVD players or DVDs.  Up to you.

I hope some of these were helpful.  Next up for my blog will be taxes.  I’m planning on tackling all my own tax returns this year and will communicate back to all of you what I learn.

Stay tuned

Windows to Mac and back to Windows

Yes, I guess it’s true!  I’m just not meant to be cool.  I tried to be cool but it just didn’t suit me!!

What follows is my diary of my move from a PC/Windows/Blackberry world to an all Apple world and eventually back.  I admit I just wanted to be cool.  I really saw no obvious reason to switch other than the rest of my family was on Mac and many of my cool friends were on the Mac, and they all seemed to love it.  I include numerous lessons learned and offer numerous bits of advice as I move you through this experience.  Mainly, I hope none of you de-connect me from your Linkedin as a result of these revelations.

This story begins around 9 months ago after I just purchased the 5th Mac and 4th iPhone for members of my family.  I absolutely love the buying experience Apple has created from the website to the physical stores, the Genius Bar and finally the packaging each Apple product comes in.  The buying experience is right out of the old Ford Model T days of “you can have it in any color you want sir as long as it’s black”.  Same now with Apple except it’s “White” not black.  I love the idea that I don’t have to make 50 or more decisions when buying the Apple product.  Compare this to the Lenovo experience where you first choose a model line, then a series, then a config category then you choose every component from a list of at least 3 options.  Yikes!!!  The Apple stores are brilliant.  You can just go down there and try everything for as long as you like with no high pressure sales tactics.  See if you can find a place to go try a Lenovo in the configuration you’re looking for.  Best Buy?  Visit and you’ll quickly see why they’re going down the tubes just behind CompUSA, Computerland and numerous others.

Once you’ve ordered the Apple product and it arrives (always on time), Wow! what an experience it is to unpack it.  Makes you really feel like you’ve bought something of grand and unique value.  Sometimes I wonder if the packing materials cost more than the device it so neatly envelopes.  From the perfect fit of the packaging, to the creative ways it all comes together and comes apart, and the elegance of the materials themselves just makes you feel so good you don’t bother to think for a minute you’ve over paid by at least 30% for the functional value of the product.  It wouldn’t surprise me to hear someday that Apple spends almost as much in R&D on the packaging as it does the products themselves.

Up to 9 months ago I had only experienced the” buying experience” and had never actually had the opportunity to use a Mac laptop or iPhone or IPad.  I assumed I had been missing out on the most exhilarating, exciting, cool and self actualizing part of the Apple experience.  The using it part…  I was feeling deprived and oh so uncool.  That’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands.  Get rid of the gray, lose 25 pounds, get into top fighting shape and go all in on a Mac, iPhone and iPad.  Ditch the PC/Windows/BB.  I was going to be cool.  In fact, I didn’t lose the Gray or the 25 pounds and I’m still not in fighting shape as I figured just carrying around the sleek white mac would trump all that stuff.

Starting with the MacBook Air it’s time for some reality…

No matter what hardware I’m running I can’t do without Outlook.  From all I could tell initially this would not be a problem since Outlook was also available on the Mac.  Once I finished the self actualizing step of unpacking my very own Mac and starting it up I proceeded to load Outlook.  Yikes!!  I barely recognized it once it was installed.  It looked nothing like the outlook I knew and loved from the PC.  After doing some digging I discovered it’s at least 2 versions behind the latest version for the PC and maybe more depending on your definition of “version”.  All components of Outlook (eMail, Calendar and contact DB) where from the stone age.  Initially I said to myself “well you didn’t think being cool was going to come for free did you?” and I soldiered on to the Outlook migration step.  Getting my Outlook data migrated over to the Mac.  Sounds simple right?  It’s all Outlook.  Wrong!  Mac requires the outlook data source files be converted into it’s proprietary format called .OLM.  I found out later that’s because it’s virtually impossible to convert from OLM to anything non Mac.  Yikes!  I won’t bore you with all the details surrounding this process but suffice it to say at least 10 hours of time was sunk into this conversion.

Is this little diversion going to detract me from becoming cool?  Hell NO!  Despite the dreadful outgoing mail performance, the horrendous email UI, the dropped fields in the contact DB and the stone age look of the calendar I’m moving on.  Next step is to simply connect the new Mac to the multi-function Printers we have hanging off the network in the house.  This should be really easy.  Right?  Standard H-P multi-function printer/scan/fax.  After numerous back and forth with H-P I got the right printer driver downloaded but when it came to the first time I needed to scan something or print double sided I was informed “the Mac software is not yet available from H-P.  Sorry sir!”  These two words are going to repeat themselves many times as this story unfolds.  Okay, so now my double sided printer/scanner can only print single sided.  I again ask myself for the sake of being cool can I live with this?  Hell yes!  On we go.

Next we decide we will swap in an XBox (yes at the request of the kids) for our old Wii (deemed no longer state of the art).  This requires me to reprogram our universal logitech AV remote control.  Should be a simple task as the settings are all stored in the cloud at Logitech and I just need to download the desktop ap to my shiny new White MacBook Air, log in and make one simple change in the configuration and all should be fine.  Hmm, well not quite.  It turns out Logitech does not support it’s desktop application running on the MacBook Air.  After numerous requests to speak to “management” at Logitech they gave me access to an “unsupported” version of the desktop application that ran on an older Mac running an OS earlier than Lion.  Yes, several more hours of fiddling and I was able to get the remote updated so my head would remain attached to my body the next time someone wanted to use the XBox (which is a very useful piece of equipment for many reasons).  Again I pause to ask myself “how much do you really want to be cool?”.  Hmmm, my conviction is waning.

For brevity sake I’m going to skip the next 6-8 other experiences in the same vein and get to the punchline.  The final act that caused me to bail on the whole needing to be cool thing at the expense of getting anything done, was when my wife needed to download a set of digital pictures from her camera and then copy them to a thumb drive to take to her classroom.  If there’s any task that should be optimized for the Mac it would be something like this.  Well, have you ever tried to just select, copy and paste photos from iPhoto onto an external drive of any kind.  Between all of us we could never get it to work.  Fast forward, I as able to do this in 3 minutes on the PC.

The end of the road to Coolness!  Went out and bought a Lenovo laptop with 30% more of everything than my Air and at 65% the cost, and the new Nokia Lumia 900 with Windows Mobile.  The nightmare is now over.  I’m home at last.  I love the Windows Mobile UI.  Simple, fast and intuitive.  Everything works.  Nowhere near as many aps in the ap store, but with a screen 30% larger than the iPhone and a real full featured browser there is nowhere near the requirement for Aps designed for the phone only.  I’m still discovering new unique features of the Lumia.  I was driving in the car yesterday and a text message arrived.  The phone automatically asked (verbally through the Car audio) if I wanted the message read to me and who it was from.  When I verbally responded with “read it” it translated the text to speech perfectly and asked how I would like to respond.  Wow!  Try and get your iPhone to do that!

Moral of the story:  I’m not feeling cool but I am feeling productive, efficient and back home where I belong.

I won’t even mention the cracked screens (yes, very plural), failed charger connections, failed top buttons, battery decay we’ve experienced with all our Apple products.  Despite all this everyone except me in the house still loves their Mac/iPhone.  At least I can now print, use Outlook, copy pictures from a camera straight to a thumb drive and update our TV remotes.

On a more serious note one piece of important advice:  There are essentially three consumer tech ecosystems out there.  Pick one and stick with it for everything essential.  Everything essential for people like me is PC OS, eMail, Calendar, contacts/connections/friends/etc., mobile device and OS, and finally the tablet.  The three ecosystems competing in the market are Microsoft, Google and Apple.  Pick one and stick to it as much as possible.  They all make claims they are “open” and connect, and play nice with the other ecosystems out there but it’s simply not true.

A couple random useful thoughts

I received quite a few responses to my last couple topics as well as requests for me to evaluate several additional topics.  Below I address the following in random order:

• Life Insurance – How much is enough?
• Balancing your checkbook
• Buying yourself a new car every 6 months by spending 3 hours of your time getting exercise and setting a good example for your kids.
• $1 saved v $1 earned
• Thinking about life from the book “Thinking Fast and Slow” chapter 38.  How satisfied are you with your life? Love this one!!

Let’s tackle the first 4 first, and then the tough one last…

Life Insurance – How much is enough?

I’m only going to talk about life insurance in the purest sense of the term.  True insurance against the death of the person insured.  In years gone by there were different types of Life Insurance and some people bought life insurance as a form of investment.  I don’t see that happening anymore.

As I’ve mentioned previously my family has chosen to “self insure” for Life Insurance.  In other words we don’t carry any life insurance other than what comes for free with our health insurance from the company I or my wife happen to work for at the time.  Many people do carry life insurance and the question is always how much insurance should we carry?  In my view the answer is two part; part one is do you want the insurance to fully compensate financially as if the deceased person was still living.  If not, what % would you be comfortable?  50%?  75%?  The second part of the answer links directly back to the Family Financial Plan in a previous Blog Post.  You need to evaluate the financial impact of the person in question (being considered for Life Insurance) on the family financial plan.  Consider both the cost impact as well as the income potential.  From here it gets pretty simple if you’ve developed your financial plan as described in the prior Blog Post.  You add up all the income from today forward that person would likely earn for you to reach your goals and subtract what they would be personally costing the family over that same period of time and you get your answer.  If that sum comes to say $4M and you want to insure for the full amount, you buy a $4M life insurance policy.  If you feel you can downsize your lifestyle or modify your financial goals by say 25% then you insure for $3M. and so on…

Balancing your checkbook.  

I have to say this one really shocked me as to how many people still do this.  I can think of 4 reasons people might still balance their checking account; first would be to make sure the bank has not made a mistake (in the bank’s favor), second, to make sure you don’t overdraw the account due to a check that was written but has not yet been cashed,  third, to make sure there is no fraudulent access to your account going on, and fourth, just because it’s emotionally gratifying in some way.  Let’s take these in order.  Can you recall the last time a bank made a mistake and didn’t catch it themselves?  If they do make a mistake there are numerous easy ways in this modern online access world to catch it without needing to balance your checkbook.  Risking overdraft can easily be handled by maintaining a larger balance or adding overdraft protection to the account so that no one outstanding check can send you into the red. You can also address this issue by setting alerts in your online account to alert you when the balance reaches a level you should be taking action.  The same alert setting solution applies to fraud protection.  In addition, in the US the bank is responsible for fraud so they will more likely catch it before you do by balancing your checkbook each month.  I’ll let you answer #4 yourself. Bottom line in my opinion, balancing your checkbook can take a lot of time and be very frustrating.  It’s not worth the time and frustration.

Buying yourself a new car every 6 months by spending 3 hours of your time getting exercise and setting a good example for your kids.

As my family will attest this is one of my favorites.  If you’re like me and in a white collar management sort of job where you spend all day managing people, thinking strategically and planning for the long term, you come home most nights and think back on the day and ask yourself “what did I really get completely done today?”.  In my case the answer is usually “nothing!”.  If you’re also like me you like driving a nice car.  By nice I mean one of top quality that runs like new, looks like new and even smells like new.  Well, there are two ways to accomplish this on an ongoing basis;  You can buy a new car (spending $50K or more) every 6 months or the alternative option is to spend 3 hours once every six months and restore it to “new” condition right in your own driveway, with water, car wash detergent, wheel wash soap, leather conditioner and so on.  In addition, it’s good exercise, it sets a good example for the kids but most of all when you’re done you can say to yourself you really got something done today.  Try it.  Also a good way to catch up with the neighbors.

$1 saved v $1 earned

This one may be completely obvious but I still think it’s worth mentioning.  When you complete your family financial plan and you conclude something has to be done to improve the situation, remember that money saved (not spent) is after tax money.  The IRS will not tax you for saving money.  If you’re in the 50% tax bracket (top bracket at least for now) that means for every dollar you can improve your financial situation by cutting an expense is worth $2 in incremental earnings.  In previous blog posts I’ve talked about many ways to save money by simply being a bit more efficient and aware of what things should really cost without giving up on any utility or sacrificing any quality of life.  I plan on digging into this much further in a future post.  Bottom line is you don’t just have to work longer or take more risk with your investments or buy more lottery tickets.

Thinking about life from the book “Thinking Fast and Slow” chapter 38.  How satisfied are you with your life?

If any of you have not read the Book “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, and you have many analytical tendencies like I do you should definitely put it at the top of your list.  It’s best read electronically as it has many interesting links to related research.  One very interesting question it poses towards the end of the book (chapter 38) is “How satisfied are you with your life?”.  The same basic premise explored in the book generally also applies when answering this question.  In the book Kahneman developed this framework for thinking he simply labels “Level 1 and Level 2 thinking”.  Yes, not very creative for a book full of so many insights into how we think about things.  Level 1 thinking is your immediate gut reaction conclusion you reach when faced with a question or issue needing thought and needing an answer.  You reach this conclusion instinctively based on your immediate frame of reference.  Level 2 thinking is as I put it “doing the math”.  It involves taking a much more structured and in-depth analytical approach to reaching a conclusion.  It attempts to strip out the emotion from the decision and focus just on the facts.  The book gives 100’s of examples whereby using only level 1 thinking to reach conclusions yields the wrong answer most of the time.  The more important the decision the more you should extend to level 2 thinking to insure you reach the right answer.  The less important it is to get there right answer and the less time you have to analyze the situation the the more appropriate the use of Level 1 thinking is.

I leave it to you to read chapter 38 and think about how you go about answering the question “How satisfied are you with your life?”.  I would like to modify this question slightly to read “How satisfied are you with your current financial situation?”.  The Level 1 response is what most of us apply when we ask ourselves this question.  We might take a quick look at our investment portfolio, our bank account, the size of the home we live in and a few other things that require no serious time or in depth thought.  From this we conclude something like “Ah we’re fine” or “Oh S_ _ t, we’re in trouble”.  We reach this conclusion based on how we feel at that moment not from any scientific analytical process.  It could literally be determined by events of that day or the last week.  Maybe the stock markets had a good week.  Maybe you received your bonus for the year just yesterday.  Maybe your daughter’s volleyball team won the High School league championship, or a big Crew Regatta.  These are all recent events that would give you a good or bad frame of reference that impact Level 1 thinking as it relates to how you feel about your financial well being at that moment.  Simply being in a good mood or a bad mood will have a large impact on how you answer this question using Level 1 thinking.

The Level 2 thinking approach to answering this question is spelled out in my Blog on Financial Planning in the Modern Era.  Using Level 2 thinking you carefully evaluate the facts and make projections into the future.  You run numerous “what-if” scenarios and you develop an answer to this question that strips out the emotion and the most recent biases impacting your Level 1 frame of reference.  It looks at the situation holistically and over a lengthy period of time.  You can be much more confident in the conclusion you reach when it’s based on Level 2 analysis and therefor you will worry less about the answer you reach.  You will find yourself asking that question much less often.  If you only apply Level 1 thinking as soon as the recent events of the last week are now events of 6 weeks ago you will begin worrying again and asking the question all over again.  The question “How satisfied are you with your financial situation?” is far too important a question to be left to Level 1 thinking.  My guess is that most people don’t move beyond Level 1 when answering this question and it leads to a constant source of stress and anxiety.  Taking the time to do the analysis laid out in my previous post will set the right framework for answering this question properly.  Yes, the initial investment in time may be considerable when set against the backdrop of how much free time you may have, but when offset by the accompanying reduction in stress and worry my feeling is it’s a no brainer.  Do the work!  Take it to Level 2!!