I can understand why you are angry that you cannot replace your BMW X1 Sport Diesel with another X1 diesel. But unfortunately we are all going to be forced to change over to electric vehicles whether we like it or not within the next ten years. Car manufacturers are no longer going to be allowed to produce petrol or diesel vehicles so if we don’t change over we will have to stop driving. I am not enthusiastic about having an electric vehicle as I live in a flat. It is not going to be as convenient for me to charge my car as it is for someone who owns a house and can charge their car on the driveway or in their garage with their own charger overnight. I am in terrible chronic pain in my back and legs so sitting waiting for my car to fully charge at a service station or somewhere else is going to be difficult for me especially in winter. It would be great if we could charge our cars whilst out doing shopping or when we go to the cinema so we can do something productive whilst charging our vehicles and we aren’t sitting waiting. I can understand why we are moving to electric vehicles and that it will help the environment in the long-term but I worry about charging, range, breaking down with no range left, the cold weather in Scotland where I live and the impact it will have on the range of the vehicles, the prices of electric vehicles are much higher for most brands so the advance payments on Motability are going to be higher. The switch to electric and the Scottish Government replacing PIP with their own benefit and the impact it will have on choosing a vehicle up here in the future mean there will be massive changes ahead. I really hope the Scottish Government do agree to Motability running the scheme up here with the new disability benefit and we get access to the same vehicles the rest of the U.K does. Hopefully the prices of electric vehicles will go down to the same price levels we pay for petrol and diesel ones currently or the prices won’t be considerably higher. The one good thing about the switch to electric is that the cars will most likely be all automatic so people who need an automatic like me will not have to select vehicles with much higher advance payments than the manual equivalent like we do currently.
These are problems that Motability, national government and local councils should be dealing with right now but are not.
Scotland had an oil company running its electric charging network & that oil company didn’t bother repairing chargers in remote areas because it didn’t want to push electric cars over fossil cars as they’d lose business & power.
Motability appointed that same oil company to install chargers at peoples houses & again that company is trying to put people off electric cars by providing a dreadful service & refusing installs for made up reasons.
Then there’s the cost caps on cars on the scheme at a time when EVs have yet to achieve parity with fossils and hence are of course more expensive, but, as we have seen in the last year, EVs have a much higher residual value as we run up to the government imposed 2030 deadline for fossils. EVs should not be subject to the same price caps until price parity in 2026/7, and then we could have larger EVs right now.
With chargers there is a resistance by councills run by fossils for fossils without foresight or proper planning. Take a look at chargers installed, how many are accessible to someone in a wheelchair? How did they get through the planning departments over the last 10 years, are they ever going to correct the installations?
Then there’s the price of electricity at chargers, for instance you can charge at an Ionity charger for 69p/kWh, assume 3 milles/kWh range in winter in an EV, making that 23p/mile, way more expensive than petrol or diesel and Ionity is funded by the EU & many of the major EU car companies such as VW group. However, with Gridserve looking at at price of 30p/kWh standard on motorways & trunk routes, Ionity in the UK are finding their chargers deserted.
We have a situation where Motability are still promoting fossils over EVs by restricting the larger EVs & simply not adding the slightly more expensive ones. I’m not talking about the £55k & up Mercedes/Porsche/Jaguar rubbish, I’m talking about sensibly priced EVs such as the Skoda Enyaq iV 60 at £32k (why isn’t it on the Scheme?), Skoda Enyaq iV 80 at £40k, even the Audi Q4 e-tron 35 at £40,750, the ID4 1st at £40,800, Kia e-Niro 64 at £32,445, Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus at £40,990, Mercedes EQA 250 at £43,495, Hyundai Ioniq 5 Long Range 2WD at £41, 945, VW ID4 starting at £32, 150, etc etc. In 3 years time all these will have much higher residuals than fossils.