We Need Your Help! What's Your Experience With Motability?🚗

You hit the nail on the head , it is about jealousy .

Nobody is proposing going back to 'old 3 wheelers', they wouldn't meet today's safety standards for one thing.

There is a massive difference from restricting the range available, to issuing 3 wheelers.

The last Motability car i had, i brought it home for the first time, and a man across the road shouted 'is that Motability'? I shouted 'yes', and had no problem doing so, as his was Motability too!

I could have wound him up and said i bought it cash, but i didn't fancy explaining myself to the DWP if he or another neighbour reported me.

My street is a new street ( 11 years old), and all of us are either working age or OAP disabled. It is obvious that all the new cars are Motability; all except one older 4x4 truck (pratmobile). 🤣

Reform are not lovers of Motability…….here we go again on Invacars !!

Also - again the assumption that ALL Motability cars are BMW's.

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And in case anyone believes Reform only have awards based on mental health in their sights, here’s Anderson on Motability, in response to a question from the Daily Express journalist, Christian Calgie:

“The Motability scheme has got completely out of hand.  One in five new cars on the road now are a Motability car. 

“I know people through doing this job and working at the CAB before, that will claim PIP the higher rate mobility for a family member and that family member will never get to use that car apart from maybe once or twice a year.  They go to hospital in the car and the rest of the time the family are driving about in a brand new BMW on their drive. Its not fair. . .  I remember back in the day if you were on disability and you wanted a car from the state, it was a blue three wheeler.  Anybody remember those?  What’s wrong with that?  Lets go back to that. You’ll quote me on that, won’t you, Calgie?” [Laughs aloud)

In fact, the blue three-wheeler Invacar was so dangerous that they stopped making them in 1981 and the few still on the road in 2003 were recalled.

They were underpowered, unstable in high winds, unreliable when braking, had a flimsy fibreglass body and had only one door, which could make getting out very difficult when they overturned.  They also had the petrol tank mounted under the front bonnet, increasing the risk of a fire in a collision.

Racing driver Graham Hill road tested one and said afterwards “ I was so appalled at what I found that ever since then I have tried everything within my power to publicise the fact that such vehicles should not be allowed on the road.”

In addition, they could only legally hold one person, so would be useless for anyone who needed someone else to drive them.

But, for Lee Anderson, bringing them back would just be a bit of a laugh.

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What a silly sausage Lee Anderson is……I don't think that this suggestion will even make it out of the starting blocks.

Several newspapers over the weekend reported that Ms Reeves plans to block who are people claiming sickness benefits from accessing the Motability scheme. The Chancellor is also said to be considering ending access to high-end cars through the scheme, as well as top-of-the-range insurance and breakdown cover. This is said to come from a concern that offering a premium driving experience to those using the scheme could undermine wider public confidence in the benefits system.

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So when you break down - in THEIR vehicle - I suggest just walking away and leaving it where it is…..

I agree with the choice of vehicle to not include Mercs, BMW etc

It is just trolling, the same as the clown on the other side of the Atlantic.

it depends totally on what the disability is

Here is the debate in House of Commons

Apparently - they await a report in Autumn 2026 before anything changes

Motability a huge reserve of money, but still charge huge advances for some cars which is outside the range of most disabled people unless people have money and just have PIP.

I sort of agree with the idea of reducing the high end luxury models to a more affordable range, but for me when I got my first car, it was about using an expensive car that I would never be able to afford to drive in my life, it boosted my self confidence immensely and when I was lying in my hospital bed, I dreamt of being able to zoom from home to hospital (never happened), expensive cars come with some drawbacks, I got the one with the sun roof and then discovered that my medication prevented me from coming in contact with sun, doh, so I never got to use the sun roof, because of the sun roof, it lowered the roof height and every time I got into or out of the car, it was a major struggle for me. I did maybe 3500 over 2 years and 90% of that was back and forth to the hospital.

I downscaled from a Ioniq 6 to an Inster 02, because I found I was driving around with a lot of extra space that I was not using and I struggled to get my wheelchair into the car because of the high load lip and the boot was really small with lots of space, as in compact not high.

Increasingly new cars are coming out with wider and wider dimensions, which means they are very difficult to park and at the hospital there are not enough disabled bays, so quite often you have to park in a normal bay, and the car does not fit, it is cumbersome going around corners and going in and out of the hospital carpark.

They should have restriction on the width of the car.

Now with fewer hospital visits, for the amount of driving I do the Inster is quite sufficient for me as most of my driving is local with the occassional hospital and regular GP visits, but it does mean there are a lot of people road raging against a smaller car and trying to take advantage of me on the road.

I like the full electronic suite in both the Ioniq 6 and Inster, I originally didn't like it with all those bop and bings going off, but now since I struggle because of my meds I find that really useful. I still turn off steering wheel assist and lane keep assist, have had issues with them dragging me into ditches.

So I got my new car from Motability supposedly able to get a charging unit, but almost immediately their contractors found plenty of reasons not to able to install a charger at home, plus they expected me to provide all sorts of technical stuff, drawings, photographs etc. that being disabled I couldn't manage to do, they were so backlogged in installations, they were just out to make excuses for not being able to install a charging unit.

I don't have a BP charging station near me, the only one is shell and it is not covered by the Motability discount.

I think this new idea to move from a charge card to using a mobile app is really stupid, I struggle to hold my mobile, struggle to open it or let alone answer the phone, using apps is a major problem for me, so now they are replacing the card with an app on your phone.

Insurance is quite a good rate with Motability, for an expensive car like the Ioniq 6 to have it built into the price is really reasonable.

But when I got a puncture, the supposed lead time of having them come out to repair it, which is supposed to be 4 days, was actually 2 weeks and I had to drive to Kwik fit with a leaky tire to get it done in 4 days, Motability out source a lot of the services, so although once I got to Kwik fit, they were very good about authorising the replacement tire, it was difficult to organise.

Cost wise I really had to consider whether getting a car on PCP or getting a car on Motability was better, PCP is cheaper, but you have to insure yourself and pay all those extra costs.

Electric cars have a limited life span, battery deteriorates and technology gets replaced, they are constantly releasing newer and more efficient electric cars, so buying on on PCP with the view to maybe owning your own car has to be considered against the useful life of the car.

I think for a small car that is cheap insisting on the same monthly fee as a big luxury car, albeit the advance fee is a bit expensive, for my Inster I pay the same total allowance as using an Ioniq 6.

When I first went in to the dealer to test drive the Inster, I found it a bit too compact, with my difficulty getting in an out it was a bit of a squeeze with me having to adjust the steering wheel to get in and out. I struggle a bit with the right side of my body, because during one of the operatiosn they cut into the muscle and it has never recovered, so I no longer have muscles there, this meant that I had to get a modification for getting into and out of the vehicle, the dealer's installer, said it could not be done.

Fortunately after several months I emailed all the disablility installers close to me off the Motability website and was able to find one that could do the installation. It's just I had to organise this myself.

I eventually went with ACS and they did a really good job, so I can fit into the Inster and I didn't have to get a swivel to get in. (Not all the Motability installers responded and not all of them were helpful)

I must say whenever I spoke to the Motability people they were very helpful, I did struggle a bit using the website because there are some old links and some new links, so the old links I found were better than the new links, often I was non plussed following the new links, because they took me through more questions than I needed or wanted to fill in and didn't really take me to the right place.

I saved 50% on the adaptation fee and had to pay a £250 fee to change my car in the second year to the new car, worth noting that returning a car early even in excellent condition does not give you the £100 return fee. That said I did get a pro rata return of my advance for the number of months left on the lease, so I was very pleased with that.

I had some other issues, for example my warning light for service came on and when I took my car in for the service, the dealer made an excuse to not service it in the first year, but claimed it only had to be serviced in the second year, at that stage my then Ioniq 6 kept returning an error with the tire pressure, even though I kept checking the tire pressure, it was not very helpful when it went in for it's service they then just did the updates, but had not tested the car to see if it worked, so got the car back and found that the electronics were all messed up, fortunately they came back online, but bit of a poor show.

When I was switching cars I looked at getting a PCP deal compared to Motability, found the Renault dealer of the same dealer group was very unhelpful, even tried to get me to pay more for the standard base colour claiming that they had no stock of the standard base colour, I had actually spoken to a different branch of the same dealership gotten a cheaper quote with the base car colour I wanted, and didn't appreciate the hard sell attitude of the dealer trying to sell me a car I didn't want. "Car dealers", really have to be on your guard when getting cars from them and know what you want.

When I first went with my Ioniq 6, the dealer tried to sell me Matt paint an extra I did not want or need, tried to sell me a different model which did not have the features I wanted, fortunately I had previously researched what I wanted.

Despite this in order to get my car "early" I had to pay extra for digital side mirrors, at the end of the day I had to pay an extra £1000 to get my car "early" which basically amounted to saving a month and was not really early, people need to be aware of the shenanigans of car dealers and even with Motability you can very easily end up paying more than you need to. I found this sort of behaviour a bit much so refused to buy a car from that person or dealer.

On the Motability website, they do not actually give accurate specifications of the cars, but recently they have added a link to additional specifications which are helpful.

I am very happy with my Motability car now, but recently had to slam on the brakes because someone turned without indicating and I discovered that the car has a problem with emergency braking, gentle braking is fine, and I-pedal is fine, but slamming on the brakes cause and uneven drum feeling and using the brakes immediately after using this it feels like you are grinding on brake drums, before getting my new car I researched it extensively and it was only after this happened that I went and checked for specific reviews about this and found the reference to "grabby brakes".

Bearing all of this in mind I am very pleased with my Motability car.

And hopefully people can see right through such a poor attempt at division. They have nothing to offer worth a hoot.