Guys I work with are paying $700 per month for their car (Lease or PCP Finance), just so they can have a new car every 3 years,.... but they own nothing. So, they are paying $25,000 over the 3 years before they change to a new car. Yes, they get a new car every 3 years, but what for?

I paid $6,000 for my 2004 91k mile LS430 in Jan 2018 and so far it has cost me $4,000 in repairs and service costs over 55k miles and 7.5 years but has never let me down. Even if I factor in the $6,000 I am about to spend on it that's $16,000, or a QUARTER of what they have paid out over the same period. Not only that, but my car is still worth $6,000 on the used car market, so I have only spent $10,000 over the 7.5 years, so I have actually paid less than a SIXTH of what they have.

I see buying new cars as the 2nd most efficient way to waste money on the planet, right after gambling.

My C14 was bought new in 2007 and I bought a new RD50 in 1979 and a new Z1300/6 in 1984 (working bike for courier work) but otherwise I have never bought a new vehicle.
I sold the RD50 at a loss, the Z1300 paid for itself in about 4 months of work and after 18 months & 170,000kms I sold it to a friend who ran it to 360,000kms over the next 15 years before the engine ate itself,... and I still have the C14.

As for the "battery replacement" issue, this is way less common than engine replacements in ICE cars and about as expensive. Most batteries with faults can now be repaired and there are specialists out there who will replace individual cells in a battery as needed as well as fix problems with the electronics associated with them.

Service costs on BEVs are WAY less than ICE cars, fuel costs are variable but assuming you charge at home every night you can expect to pay less than a quarter of what you would pay for an equivalent ICE, but tyre life is slightly worse, probably due to increased weight.

Apart from the range issue and the nagware/driver aids I would love to have a decent sized BEV. They drive just as nicely as my LS430 and cost way less to run.
However, it's not going to happen any time soon as they are all too new and too expensive.

Thanks for the suggestions and ideas.  I have set aside a week in June for start to finish so I don't feel rushed.

IIRC when I did the valves on my C10 the first time, it took me three days start to finish-I was on my own time, so there was no reason to rush.  After about the fifth or sixth time I cut the time in half with no wasted motion and no rush.  Just thinking, I hope I won't have to do the mirror bracket on the C14 a second time...

Lexus LS500h and it's a VERY nice car but I can't stand the looks of the models with the gawping Basking Shark mouth grille.

THANK YOU.  I also find them to be absolutely hideous.  Everyone I know seems to think Toyota's grills are just horrible, and yet they persist with this yucky design year after year.  Honda went stupid with their hyper-angular crap, especially on the Acuras, but they heard the feedback and, year after year, cut back on it.

Nissan are also not doing great because of their financial situation.

Yeah, I hope things don't get worse for them and they dig themselves out.  Other than the issues with their CVT's, they make great vehicles.  Priced well, reliable, and very attractive.  They are very popular around here.

Not on my C14, but on my C10 I have plastic welded with great success. I have also used the "staples" that stitch the plastic together with for sections that needed reinforcement.
I have not had great success with fibreglass or epoxy glues as the vibrations in the plastic eventually shakes the epoxy loose from the ABS (acrylic) plastic no matter how much you rough up the surface. The repair will last a year or 2 but eventually you end up having to do it again.
I have also used ABS Cement and it works well, but is best used mixed with powdered ABS as a filler.
I have yet to break any of the plastics on my C14 (touch wood!!!) and long may that continue! 

When I got my 2016 Concours I was aware of some accident damage in the right mirror area.  It turned out the mirror mounting bracket (the same part number on every single C1400 ever made) had been broken and repaired with some material-looked like a glop of JB Weld or something similar.  I found that out when the mirror flew off the bike when riding on the interstate.  The mirror was there, and a second later it was gone, like it had disappeared.

I have the parts I need (silver mirrors no longer available, so it was either get two metallic spark black ones, or have one silver one and one black one), and I have a service manual to use to remove the upper cowling for access to the mirror mounting bracket.  However the mirrors mount through the upper cowling, the bracket goes under the gauges from mirror to mirror, and when the right mirror came off, it took a triangular piece out of the cowling-although that might have been broken when the accident happened. Also the back 3-4" of the bottom of the upper cowling is broken and held in place by one screw in the middle cowling.

I am not trying to make it look new, in fact I may just use duct tape on the back side of that little piece, but I guess I would like to 'glue' the triangular piece of plastic that goes between the mirror and the mounting bracket.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.  TIA