On the 20th and 21st May, Motability held an event at the NEC in Birmingham. For those of you who are not familiar with Motability, they’re a scheme / charity that enables disabled people to drive. To be eligible, you need 12 months remaining (until recently, this used to be three years), and the higher rate of any UK disability benefit in the mobility category. Eligible people can either get a powered scooter, wheelchair or car on the scheme, using their higher-rate mobility component.
It is a great scheme that covers:
- Your insurance,
- service cost,
- breakdown
- maintenance
- MoT
I have been off the scheme once, because of PIP deciding I was not disabled enough. I never want that again. The only insurance company that would touch me as a disabled driver under 25 was Churchill (kudos Churchill). All the others saw me as a risk. My excess was high and I had to pay for my car. Thankfully, I was back on PIP before I had to have another MoT done. Anyway…
The Big Event
I had seen the Big event appear before, but it always came when I wasn’t really shopping for new cars. This time around, it came when my lease only had a few months left, so I thought I might as well go and see what it is all about. I also recommended a friend to go as well as she was looking for her first motability vehicle, unfortunately we missed each other but we got what we needed from the event.
They made things as clear as possible, giving a clear map of where everything would be, which was great. They even had a quiet room for people who are sensitive to loud noises, or just need a break. And friends like Sophie will recognise the Changing Places icon. They absolutely did their best to make sure people were accommodated.
On the map, there is a scooter and powered chair drive track for people to test those out. Lots of people definitely gave that a go. Lots of places to eat… everyone appeared to get hungry at the same time as it quickly filled up. They also had an area to test drive specific cars. Useful for some.
Electric Vehicles
They also had speakers to discuss various things about the scheme, including the move to electric vehicles. Now… the UK, we are usually about 10 years behind everyone else when implementing things. As the world moved into 5g, we only started setting up 4g. As smart metres became popular in europe, we… well… we’re still trying to get all homes with them in. I feel sorry for households with the old fashioned pay as you go metres.
Looking at this, I’m not surprised that many of our roads are missing charging points for electric cars. Many of the ones we do have are slow charging rather than rapid. And people who don’t own their home (which is a good portion of the UK… 37% according to google). So while homeowners may be able to put in charging points, near 40% of the uk can’t.
This is a concern for when petrol and diesel cars finally go off-market, because let’s face it… car manufacturers aren’t going to wait for the UK to catch up.
After the speakers discussed Electric Vehicles in detail, this is one of the points I brought up. I live in a flat, private tenant. I would need to ask my building owners to put a charging point in… and I don’t see them doing this. But Motability are aware not all customers can have charging points. So for their customers who would like an electric car, they do an alternative.
They give you membership to BP charging points. You’d have access to a map to see where one is free. This is great if you live in an area that has a lot of points, especially rapid points. Still, at the moment, I’ll be sticking with petrol for two reasons (I’ll come to those later).
Looking at cars at the Big Event
This is why I came to the event. My ford fiesta is now almost three years old. The scheme only allows you to keep the car for 3-5 years, depending on specific conditions. With the shortage, I knew there was a likelihood my car would be extended while I waited for the new one, so I figured it was best to look now. Ford was there, with the focus and the fiesta. The fiesta advance payment is now £400 but that didn’t phase me much.
I looked at Skoda and Hyundai. The Hyundai I didn’t like much. The back seats were cramped which would be a problem for when I have passengers. The Skoda was alright but I wasn’t really sold it when I looked at it.
I looked at the Fiat 500X. It was great! Easy car to get in and out of. The seat went as high as I needed it to without a seat cushion. The boot was big and there was plenty of legroom for passengers. I fell in love with this car. When I asked the person at the event how much the downpayment was, she said £149. Instant love. Still, I looked at other cars and glad I did.
The next one that I liked was the Vauxhall Corsa. It was similar to my ford fiesta but it had an advance payment of £0. It has apparently beat the fiesta on some kind of car league table this year. And although it has no advance payment, it also has reverse parking camera which my fiesta doesn’t have.
Erm… that’s all I can say about cars really. However, having them all in one area rather than going to several dealerships was handy and it allows disabled people to really get a feel of the cars.
Test Driving Cars
I didn’t test drive any of the cars. None of the cars I was interested in were available to be test-driven with the adaptations I needed. The cars available were more SUVs and the like, which would be great for disabled drivers who need to fit in a wheelchair. However, personally, I didn’t feel like test driving a car I knew I wouldn’t be having.
It would have been great if they had more hatchbacks / smaller cars available to test drive with the adaptations I needed, but what was available would have been useful for some people and that’s great.
Speaking to dealers at the Big Event
After speaking to the dealers at the event, I went to Fiat and Vauxhall dealerships to get more information. At the Fiat dealership, I learned that the £149 advance payment was for manual cars only, which was disappointing. I did ask about the automatic at the event, but they could only give you information on that specific car in the room. However, I would have expected the automatic to have added maybe £300, £400 to the advance.
Nope.
To have an automatic Fiat 500X, I would have been looking at an advance of £3000. I don’t understand why the automatic one is SOOO much more. Yep. I’m not getting the fiat unfortunately.
I went home, looked on the motability event at the cars I was interested in: Vauxhall Corsa, Ford Fiesta, Skoda something…
Ordered Car
As you can imagine, paying £3000 or more for a car (and that isn’t including my adaptations) was just too much for me.
So as I said earlier, there was two reasons I didn’t get a Electric car or hybrid. One of the reasons was that there just isn’t enough charging points for me to feel comfortable with an electric car; especially as I won’t be able to have one on my property. I actually would have considered an hybrid… but…
Turns out that due to the shortage, the Fiesta and the Skoda at the motability event were for future notice (when the chip shortage is fixed probably) so that could mean they won’t be available for another year or more. The only car on the motability scheme that was a hybrid and was available to me was the Fiat… £3000 nope 🙁 .So… there was only really one car that was left for me to order on the scheme, but it was my second choice anyhow so not all bad.
I went to Vauxhall. The car I saw at the event was an automatic so the quoted advance was the same. So I will have a Vauxhall some time between december and next year. Whenever it becomes available.
Overall
The event was great. I do wish they gave a warning to say: “This car isn’t currently on the scheme” and they had smaller cars to test drive, but overall, I don’t really have anything negative to say about the event. They tried their best to accommodate everyone. Allowed people to try adaptations. Gave talks on things that may be concerning their customers (like electric vehicles) even had a charging point for people to see if they could manage with one. It was all really well thought out.
If you missed the birmingham one, don’t worry, there are three more elsewhere throughout the year.
- Westpoint, Exeter -> 23 July
- Yorkshire Event Centre, Harrogate -> 13 August
- Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh -> 17 September.