My vote for this award this quarter goes to the Vauxhall Astra Hatchback PHEV at £8000. Now we are restricted to 3 year leases again and with an electric range of “up to 40 miles”, that up-front payment could never make sense.
I expect that, for whatever reason, Stellantis do not expect to , nor even wish to supply those vehicles to the scheme. Hence will put a high unit cost on them which distills down to a high AP to deter such volume custom.
This could be any number of reasons including:
Stellantis would rather market/promote another of their brands/vehicles to the scheme – they have enough brands after all.
Or, there could be more production slots available at one of their other brands thus as above, promote that instead of Vauxhall.
The other brands may even be more profitable to Stellantis.
Although not one for conspiracy theories, it could even be that Stellates ultimately want rid of Vauxhall (or the Astra). Vauxhall is their only non-EU/non-US brand and a bit of an outlier from their European volume brands with French Peugeot/Citroen, Italian Fiat/Alfa and German Opel etc.
Hence they remove what was once a large scheme volume seller by pricing them out of the market (yet are still being seen to offer them but know hardly anyone would pay that price). They then claim they aren’t selling, so jettison the brand and/or specific vehicle.
Oe even almost the opposite, by positioning the Vauxhall brand to a more premium brand so they sell fewer vehicles at higher cost (so greater profit).
Who knows what these large corporations have in mind for any of their brands. But they will have priced the Vauxhalls to the scheme for a reason!