We did look at the Citroën Berlingo and Peugeot Rifter, but their range is too short for what we need.
To quickly answer the question in regards to hybrid versus electric, money wise.. Don’t even compare it.
Hybrids are nonsense, the only hybrid system that makes sense in certain use cases is PHEV (if you can charge at home, and stay within or close to the electric range for the majority of drives). MHEV and FHEV are marketing nonsense, the economy of those cars usually is marginally(!) better than a pure petrol engine, but nowhere near enough to amortise itself over 3 years (even ignoring the EV tariff you’d lose).
You could ask for an extension and pray to whoever you’d like for the next few months that the Skoda Peaq comes to the scheme (somewhat doubtful, but you never know – MB seems to get decent deals with Skoda, usually).
Further, as others pointed out, you actually have to be careful since you’re quite considerably over the allowed annual mileage.
One other thing i noticed:
Yes, we looked into it. There’s no space on the school bus for my daughter, and for my son it would cost £10 a day.
If the son is the kid that goes to the school 60 miles away, this offer is actually cheaper than driving him with anything ICE related. On an assumed 130 miles (to be safe), at 50mpg (which you’ll never get in a loaded 7 seater 5008, more like 35mpg but for arguments sake), you use 2.6 gallons of fuel. That’s as near as it makes no difference 12 litres of petrol. No idea how much petrol is in your region, but it sure as hell will go up now with the Iran situation, so lets say £1.50 – £18 for 130 miles (and likely quite a bit more, since 50mpg is very unrealistic for a large petrol SUV – at 35mpg you’re at 18 litres for 130 miles). A tenner per day would actually be an almost 50% saving.
At that mileage it’d almost be worth doing math for diesels, in all honesty. After you clear that up (the mileage thing) with Motability, because that might end up costing you a LOT of money.
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.