VIM don't make = be ? in regex

Question

In Vim, equals (=) is the same as question mark (?) in a regex, as in:

a? is same as a= is same as a 0 or 1 times.

When you search with /v on you have to escape =. I don't want to have to escape =, because that's not a standard regex character. Can I make Vim treat = as literal in regex search mode?

Answer 1

There is no way to do this when you have enabled very magic mode by using \v. This specifically asks Vim to treat = as a special character. In other modes besides very magic it is treated as a literal and not a special character.

Answer 2

The very point of \v is to make everything "very magic", so why not just use \m?