My Wife is nearing the end of her second Motability lease at the end of November, her first was a Volvo V40cc in 2017 which we self funded, then the current car, a BMW X2 sDrive20i which the foundation funded. We were able to extend the lease in 2022 at Motability Operation’s suggestion as nothing on the scheme at the time seemed a better option, the seat height, heated seats and general ride comfort have been spot on.
Now we’re not able to extend the X2’s lease further (understandable) and reached out to the foundation again to see if they’d fund her next car (I’ve been her full time at-home carer since 2020 so only UC and PIP daily living as income).
She has been awarded the £749 grant and given a list of 10 EV’s to use it on. This was a week after we were notified the application was successful, but no award documentation was uploaded for nearly a week until we enquired about it, then within minutes of the call it was there. I assume they just forgot but they didn’t own it, just said “Oh well it should be there, we’ll look in to it and you should see it within the hour”.
The favourite (best of the situation, but I actually quite like it) on the list is the Skoda Enyaq 50 Edition and we’re test driving one tomorrow, but we’re left with (potentially) only the rest of the week to decide to order it in case the AP goes up too much next week and we then can’t cover it with the maximum 50% of the new car payment on top.
We could potentially ask if foundation will up the grant to allow us to use the NCP alongside it for the Enyaq 85 edition, better range and (maybe) better resale value, we live rurally and have to use a-roads for most of our journeys so that may be taken in to account?
Another option is to wait and if the AP’s do go up too much to use grant + NCP, forgo the grant and go in with the NCP and save up the remainder ourselves in the meantime. That’s assuming build times are as long as they have been or there aren’t any similar models in stock, but I know this isn’t the best plan and pretty much entirely relies on a long wait time.
Additonal info; I basically do the bulk of the driving, Wife’s neck can get so stiff she can’t turn it properly so she doesn’t like to drive much any more. I take care of getting the car serviced and the associated admin related to the car on her behalf. She has Hypermobile EDS, issues with the discs in her neck and doesn’t really like dealing with it all so leaves it to me to sort out where she can. She really doesn’t want us to have an EV, would be fine with a hybrid but it seems we have little choice now, foundation flat out told us they’re not prepared to fund a petrol or even a hybrid.
2019 BMW X2 sDrive20i
Sapphire Black