As far as I’m aware the dealership makes a flat rate on the car based on a central manufacturer based price negotiated with motability, which is less than the margin they achieve on a retail sale, but the dealers work on many KPI’s (who doesn’t?!) and these will include initial small profit, volume of registrations, servicing costs, and nice trade in at the end to make a further profit. Certainly they wouldn’t be in it if it had no purpose although it does give them a bit of good PR. In your case, as was in mine, they’ll also make a profit from the turnaround of your trade in. My best advice is not to feel like you’re in any different situation to the normal retail set up. You’re still a very valuable asset to them so they probably won’t want you to walk away. In my case I had the perfect storm of not getting a deal. The car I chose was a bargain of AP vs retail price and they knew it, it was a franchised dealer so benefitted from volume sales, the pandemic was in full swing, and I’m prohibitively far from another dealer. I tried and got no joy, except I did get a bit extra on the trade in (I added an extra to my motability car then told him I’d sign up if he covered the cost by upping my trade in) to the tune of £550 extra on a £10.5k trade in. If your circumstance is different then you may have more leverage to employ against them. I’d maybe be thinking of a pre brexit lease though, even if that means some quick deliberating now, who knows what’ll happen during Q1 2021!