Best Salary Sacrifice Scheme UK | Could Octopus EV be the best EV salary sacrifice option for you?

Supercharging your employee benefits with an electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme is an exciting opportunity, so it’s important to find the right match for your business.

There are plenty of providers out there who claim to do EV salary sacrifice the best. At Octopus Electric Vehicles, we’re all about transparency so we’re taking a closer look at some of the biggest misconceptions about our scheme to make sure you can find the perfect match for your business and employees.

When shopping around, make sure you look at like-for-like quotes as not all providers include everything that we do in their price.

Things to look out for when considering an EV salary sacrifice scheme include:

Contractual elements

• Car specification
• Mileage
• Cancellation fees
• Contract duration
• Lifestyle event protection

Additional services

• Insurance (what's the excess?)
• Servicing, maintenance, & repairs
• Tyre replacements
• Roadside assistance
• Accident recovery

EV specialist services

• Free home EV charger, or alternatives
• EV charging tariffs
• Free charging

To take a closer look at your potential savings, have a go on our handy EV calculator which compares our scheme to a traditional petrol or diesel car lease.

Cost is a pretty big factor when choosing a scheme for your team as you’ll want them to get the biggest bang for their buck. Not only that, you’ll be looking for a scheme that doesn’t cost your company tons to set up and run.

Our salary sacrifice scheme includes everything you and your team needs to get behind the wheel of an electric car, plus they’ll also benefit from reduced income tax and National Insurance contributions. It’s also completely free for your company to join. What’s not to love?

• The whole package from Octopus
• First 4,000 miles free
• License checking + fully comprehensive insurance
• 4.8* Trustpilot rating
• Tyre replacement
• Maintenance, MOT, and breakdown cover

We get that manufacturer wait times can be long, which is why we’re always looking for ways to bring the latest EV innovations to our customers. We’ve teamed up with BYD to bring the Atto 3 to the UK market, which is an affordable choice for drivers looking to get behind the wheel of a quality-built, family electric vehicle. Being BYD’s preferred supplier enables us to give your team the best range of EVs to choose from, getting your team into a brand new EV quicker! We've also worked with MG in the past to ensure reliable delivery. We’re constantly talking with manufacturers to find the best deals so watch this space.

We make EV salary sacrifice a breeze for both you and your team with our digital first-approach. Here’s how:

• Our HR dashboard enables you to manage the scheme with ease. Keep track of your employees car orders and even see how much CO2 they’re saving.
• Our quote tool lets your team order an EV in just a few clicks, and once it’s ordered, keep tabs on its process through our build tracker (think Domino's pizza tracker for EVs).
• And once the car has been delivered, your employees have access to My Account where they’ll find everything they need to get started with their brand new EV.

Being part of the Octopus Energy group gives us a few super powers too. If you've got off street parking, we can install a home charger with standard installation for free when you sign up to EV salary sacrifice. Not only that, we’ll give you 4,000 miles either to charge at home with Intelligent Octopus Go, or on the public network with Electroverse. If switching to Intelligent Octopus Go isn’t for you, you can take the public charging credit instead - no strings attached.

Do my team need to join Octopus Energy to get a car?

No, to get a car through the scheme, your team don’t have to be Octopus Energy customers. We like to think of ourselves as a pick n mix - everything is delicious but you can choose a combination that works best for you

If someone from your team wants to switch their home energy provider to Octopus Energy, they can take advantage of Intelligent Octopus Go. Our smartest EV tariff, giving drivers discounted electricity at off-peak hours. It’s quick and easy to set up a charging schedule during those hours - all they need to do is plug in and the app will take care of the rest!

From our outstanding customer service to our knowledgeable EV specialists, Octopus EV stands out from the crowd when it comes to EV expertise.

We’re here to help both businesses and employees on their EV journey. With everything covered from our account management team and EV experts to help you find your perfect car.

• Pre-ordered popular EVs
• Free to set up
• HR dashboard
• My Account for employees
• Online quote tool
• Bespoke events

We want your team to be just as excited about the scheme as we are which is why we’ve ‘octofied’ the experience:

• Octopus account manager will always be on hand for any queries
• EV experts to help you find your perfect match
• Webinars for your team to keep your team excited
• Octofied marketing assets so you can promote this employee benefit
• Dedicated drive days so your team can get behind a wheel of an EV

We know that sometimes things don’t go to plan and that’s why we’ve built in cover for your organisation if employees need to return their car before the end of their agreement. We'll work with you to agree how many cars you can return early and always aim to be flexible, to give you peace of mind.

Where the lease agreement has been active for 6 months, and in the following scenarios, an employee can return the car early with no early termination charge:

• Dismissal
• Resignation & Redundancy (including voluntary)
• Extended parental leave & long term sick leave
• Loss of licence due to medical reasons
• Accidental death
• If an employee takes unpaid parental leave, they can  keep the car free of charge up to 12 months from the start of their leave instead of returning it. This is the same for long term sickness up to 3 months.
  

You don’t pay any excess for our early termination cover, it’s included within the package. You can return up to 10 cars annually or up to 10% of your fleet without any associated charges, regardless of the car type. And we don’t set a cap on the cost of those returned vehicles. Other providers might offer 100% car returns per year but impose value caps on the cost per car, meaning you could be liable without even realising it.

So let’s say you return 10 cars, each with a £10k termination fee; with us, no charges would be applied. But with a provider that imposes a £5K cap, you could face a charge of £50k, as they only cover £5k per car. If you want more info on how this might work for you, get in touch with one of our scheme experts

Insurance is included in our scheme as standard for your team, but you can remove it if you prefer that your team covers it themselves. We’ve also removed the need for GAP cover; in the simplest terms, our insurance covers your contracted leasing risk of the vehicle, not just the market value of the vehicle itself - keeping you more protected than ever. A common example would be that if the net book value of the EV is £15k but the EV’s market value is £10k, the £5k difference is covered by your insurance, and therefore you will have what is referred to as ‘GAP’. With other scheme providers, you may need to take out Gap insurance to cover this gap, but we’ve baked it into the coverage we include. When we say fully covered insurance, we mean fully covered!

We get that you’ll want to find the scheme provider that suits your business needs - and if that’s not us, we still see anyone who gets behind the wheel of an EV as a win for the planet. To put it into perspective, if your business has just 5 cars on the road, you’ll be helping save 13.50 tonnes of CO2 emissions yearly, which is equivalent to 6,750 trees! Imagine what impact your company could make with even more EVs on the road.

Ready to start your EV journey? Show your team you care about them and the planet. Book a call with us today.