I believe if you do the maths then 5 year leases do not benefit Motability, with increased servicing/repair/MOT costs, a depreciating asset and the value of VAT free purchases being further eroded. Thus if 5 year leases were the norm I would expect AP´s to go up, not down.
The car doesn’t depreciate much between 3 and 5 years. It’s the first three years where it depreciates by far the most.
An MOT isn’t expensive and realistically, no 3-5 year old car should fail one either.
Now, if you can get a three year old lease for lets say half the allowance and no AP for two years, that’s a good deal. But we all know that that’s not how it’d work, it would be full allowance, meaning that you lease a 3 year old car for 2 years and pay what, £6000-£7000 for it, (wrongly) assuming that it’d be AP free. And after two years you then need to get either another used car, or cough up the now even more expensive AP (since cars are now expected to be out and about for five years, not three).
It doesn’t make sense for Motability at all, but more importantly, it doesn’t actually make sense for customers either.
If anything, it makes things worse. Motability isn’t run like a charity, it’s run like a business. Any suggestion that bites into the profit they’re actually not allowed to make is a non-starter.
Prior: SEAT Ateca Xcellence Lux 1.5 TSI DSG MY19, VW Golf GTE PHEV DSG MY23
Current: Hyundai Ioniq 6 Ultimate
Next: we'll see what's available in 2028.