I think I have now made my choice of my next vehicle, I’m going for the Hyundai Ioniq SE, financially it appears that it will save me a small fortune over the 3 years, but have a few queries. 1, I can’t have a charger installed as live in a flat, so will be looking at getting a Charge point installed at my partners, I presume I will have to pay for this myself. 2, On the Motability site, it says if you can’t have a charger at your home, they will provide you with access to the Polar network, is there any benefit to this over and above just signing up as normal? 3. Anyone got an Ioniq, whats it like in your experience, seems to be well rated in the press, What Car Family EV of the year and seems to ride better than the Leaf, also seems to get pretty close to it’s suggested range? Thanks
Hyundai Ioniq SE, would have been my choice of EV on the scheme this time last year, it’s efficient, it’s pretty well equiped.
I don’t know if Motability will allow the charger to be put at your partner’s address, you must ask them that.
The access to the Polar network if you can’t have a charger is another thing that Motability talk about & would involve a Polar Plus card (now renamed) worth I think £7.65 per month that gets you cheaper rates on the chargers that network owns. I have a Polar Plus card anyway from Peugeot (6 months) plus the original 3 months that is free anyway, and last summer I made good use of it as many supermarket Polar 7kW chargers are free (just use the card to start & stop the session), the 50kW rapid chargers are 15p/kWh, and the 150kW ultra rapid chargers were 20.4p/kWh which has recently risen to I think 27p/kWh. If you are going to use the Polar chargers then it’s worth having, especially if it’s free.
I test drove an Ioniq & loved it, but at the time the cost was too close to the Peugeot e-2008 that I got, but there are other cars on the scheme now that you should seriously consider too, notably the MGs, and maybe the Hyundai Kona, the 64kW Kona would be my choice at the moment but it is pricey, but that extra range would make the charger question less important.
I’d suggest having a watch of Bjorn Nyland’s youtube videos on all these cars since he tests them very well & isn’t paid by the industry to recommend their cars.