Partnerships: What makes Octopus Electric Vehicles different?
Businesses get more with Octopus Electric Vehicles. Our salary sacrifice scheme is free to join, simple to run and offers your clients' employees the whole EV package.
First up, what’s a salary sacrifice car scheme?
A salary sacrifice car scheme is an employee benefit the company joins to offer their team a fantastic range of electric vehicles to drive at no upfront cost.
With our salary sacrifice car scheme, employees make a number of tax and personal benefits savings by paying for their electric vehicle from their gross salary, before tax. It’s like cycle-to-work, but for electric cars.
We’re not the only leasing company offering EV salary sacrifice. But we are the ones making it a truly hassle-free, great experience for your company because of our unique expertise in both energy and EVs.
So what’s different about our salary sacrifice scheme?
The whole package from Octopus
Everything to hit the road. Car, charger, energy, insurance, maintenance, breakdown.
4.8 star customer service
4.8 star rated EV salary sacrifice scheme on Trustpilot.
Free home charger
We'll throw in a free home charger if you have off-street parking. If you don't, we'll switch it for 4,000 free miles of public charge.
First 4,000 miles free
Hit the road with 4,000 free miles of charge. With Intelligent Octopus Go if you charge at home, or on the public network with Electroverse.
Dedicated events for your team
We launch the scheme directly to your team, with webinars and in-person events to bring them up to speed.
Simple public charging with Electroverse
One card, one app, for all your public charging. Super simple.
Benefits for the employer
Save on National Insurance
Your clients can save on National Insurance, which can be put back into the scheme.
It costs nothing to set up
And it's easy to run with our HR portal. Minimal admin. Maximum team happiness.
Attract and keep the best people
75% of employees are more likely to stay because of their employee benefits package.
Play your part against climate change.
Help your clients become more sustainable and reward their teams at the same time.
Is it really zero cost to the business?
Yes! Our scheme costs nothing to join. There are no set up fees and no hidden costs.
Our scheme can be financially efficient for companies through the employer National Insurance Contribution savings you can make.
How does early termination protection work?
Early termination is included in all schemes. It kicks in after the first 6 months of the vehicle being delivered. We cover a minimum of 10 cars per calendar year, or 10% of the fleet, whichever is the most advantageous to the business.
Our early termination protection is available for all EVs. It’s not capped on high value cars. We give clear and fair protection to employers.
Is it open to companies of all sizes?
Yes. Our scheme is open to all, no matter the company size. We want to make make EVs accessible and affordable for all.
To join, companies must pass an initial credit check and employees will need to be on a permanent contract and employed on a salary to be eligible for the scheme.
Business Contract Hire may be better suited if the business is a small company of directors who pay themselves in dividends. We can also help with this.
Can the business control who can get an EV?
Our scheme is flexible. Companies can put eligibility restrictions based on employees or leasing terms to give more control over the management of the scheme.
This allows employers to tailor their scheme to their preference.
What support will we get?
As well as online tools (including our dedicated HR dashboard) which make employers' experience super simple, they'll also get support from a dedicated Customer Success Manager to help them make the most of the scheme.
To get started, all employers can book a 1:1 session with our onboarding specialists to chat through launching and managing the scheme before they go live with their team.
How do you make it easy to manage the scheme?
We make it hassle-free for employers to manage the scheme, with our digital-first approach.
Through our dedicated HR dashboard, employers can get all the information they need about the scheme, making it super-simple to launch, approve orders from their team, complete tax and carbon reporting and more.
Benefits for the employee
Do you have a wide selection of cars?
We offer all major EVs available on the UK market.
We only offer 100% electric cars - we’re dedicated EV specialists and we give impartial advice on what car would best suit each person.
Would we have to wait a long time to get a new EV?
It’s been well publicised that there have been production and supply chain challenges in the car industry which has impacted lead times. You can read more about this on our blog here.
Here are a few things we’re doing to mitigate the impact of extended lead times:
1) Interim cars: We have a fleet of interim cars that employees can take on a short term basis. Should an employee have a long lead time or a delayed delivery date - we will, where possible, make these available to help keep them mobile.
2) Free cancellation: We know circumstances can change so we offer free cancellation of cars up to the point of confirmed delivery.
3) Online car tracker: All employees can track their car order with our online tracker to keep up to speed with the progress of their car order. Think the Domino’s pizza tracker, but for your car.
What's the difference between going with a broker and a leasing company?
We’re a leasing company. So we own the whole customer journey and give the best possible experience throughout.
While we understand there are certain benefits to going through a broker, we see being a leasing company as one of our key strengths.
Employees will have one point of contact for ordering, one source of truth for pricing, will not be impacted by supplier changes and can make use of our purchasing powers to get unique offers from Octopus EV.
We also don’t charge any broker fees to our lease agreements - the price you see is the price you get.
Is there any up front payment for employees?
No, employees don’t pay anything up front for their EV. They simply pay an agreed monthly amount through their salary. Payments begin once the vehicle is on their driveway.
How do you support employees who want to get a car?
We make it hassle-free for employees to take part in the scheme with our digital-first approach, backed up by friendly faces who support every employee on their journey to making the switch.
All employees can join our weekly webinars to find out exactly how salary sacrifice works, join 1:1 calls with our EV specialists, and we'll send them monthly newsletters and an employee toolkit to read about the industry and details of the scheme.
Employees can order their EV completely online through our quote tool. With the ability to browse and narrow down cars based on range, price, lead times and much more.
We’re here to support and make sure every employee finds out everything they need to know about EVs, salary sacrifice and make that all important final decision.
Is the home charger included?
We offer a free Ohme ePod (untethered) home smart charger with standard install with every EV salary sacrifice order.
This will be installed by our in-house engineers from Octopus Energy Services. Employees get the whole package from under one roof.
If they can’t charge at home, no problem. We switch the free charger for 4,000 miles of public charging credit with Electroverse, absolutely free.
That’s five months’ of free ‘fuel’ for most drivers.
Being part of the Octopus Energy Group, we can offer 100% renewable energy tariffs.
If employees can charge at home and they switch to the EV dedicated tariff by Octopus Energy, Intelligent Octopus Go, we give them 4,000 miles worth of energy for free.
If employees can’t charge at home but they switch to Octopus Energy as their home energy supplier they’ll get £50 credit on their account.
Can employees buy the car at the end of the agreement?
Most employees don’t choose to buy their car at the end of their agreement, but it's an option if they'd like to buy it outright, this would be at the car’s current retail value.
What our customers say
When I realised it was possible for us to give our employees the opportunity to lease an electric vehicle and save money, it was simply too good to ignore.
It was the sales approach and how the team managed the relationships that swung it for us. It was unlike anything else I’d experienced when looking into salary sacrifice car schemes.
