Businesses get more with Octopus Electric Vehicles. Our salary sacrifice scheme is free to join, simple to run and offers employees the whole EV package.
First up, what’s a salary sacrifice car scheme?
Forget fruit in the office, this is the future of employee benefits.
As the employer, you lease the car package on behalf of your employee. Your team member gets to drive a brand-new electric car using part of their gross salary - making savings on Income Tax and National Insurance.
Employees will pay a small amount of company car tax (Benefit in Kind), which is set by the government and is fixed at 2% until 2025. And the great news is that the government confirmed it will increase marginally by just 1% in each tax year until 2028. Which is a fraction of the cost of ICE vehicles
It’s win, win. You get to supercharge your employee benefits package while supporting your journey to net zero - PLUS your team can make some huge savings too.
It costs you nothing to set up and is easy to run. No catch. Just great value. And yes, it’s open to businesses of all shapes and sizes.
A bit about us
Since 2018, we've been on a mission to help more people get behind the wheel of an electric car and move away from polluting fuel-powered vehicles. We’re here to make the transition to state of the art electric cars and green technology easy and affordable. We're experts in electric cars, offering hassle-free leasing options through a salary sacrifice scheme that empowers businesses, and employees too.
Innovation is in our DNA as part of the Octopus Energy Group, and we're here to revolutionise the car leasing industry for the better. Striving for a greener, fairer future.
Benefits for the employer
Save on National Insurance
Save money on National Insurance, which can be put back into the scheme.
Your company makes NIC savings because you’ll pay your team member less after the salary sacrifice, so Class 1 NIC will be lower.
Your company will need to pay Class 1A NIC to reflect the benefit, but these will be low while the Benefit in Kind rate is low and will be covered by your employee’s sacrifice if you choose to pass back your organisation’s net NIC savings.
* Employer NI savings per annum with 10% passback (based on an average lease)
Attract and keep the best people
More than half of employees (59%) are more likely to join or stay with an organisation if they have a comprehensive benefits package on offer. And with it costing, on average, £1,500 - £3,000 to hire a new employee why not keep the top talent within the business.
Play your part against climate change
Become more sustainable and reward their teams at the same time. Just one EV can help save 1.7 tonnes of CO2 per year which is equivalent to a return flight from London to Perth! Many businesses have utilised their EV carbon report to get certifications and help them hit their environmental targets.
We do the legwork
We make it easy to launch and maintain the scheme. Our digital tools plug into whatever systems you have for employee benefits, and your people can mostly serve themselves. We can even send a couple of EV experts and a car to your business
Employer frequently asked questions
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.
Early termination is included in all schemes. We offer instant protection for impactful life events and those that can impact affordability such as sickness or loss of licence for medical reasons. 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)
We also offer the flexibility to reallocate the car internally should another employee wish to continue the lease. We call this a novation and it is a great way to keep the EV in your company and avoid any potential fees before the 6 month mark. A car can be novated at any point after delivery.
Our early termination protection is available for all EVs. It’s not capped on high value cars.
Yes. Our scheme is open to all, no matter the company size. We want EVs accessible and affordable for all!
To join, companies must simply 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.
Our scheme is flexible to suit the needs of the company. Companies can put in eligibility restrictions based on employees or leasing terms to give more control over the management of the scheme.
Our HR Dashboard makes employers' experience super simple, through an easy to use, digital portal. They'll also get support from a dedicated Account Manager so they 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.
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 about the scheme. This makes it simple to launch, approve orders, complete tax and carbon reporting and so much more.
Your employees want our salary sacrifice scheme
The whole package from Octopus EV
Remove the need for third parties and get your car, charger and energy all in one cracking deal from Octopus EV. Save up to 40% through salary sacrifice, and get your insurance, servicing and tyres thrown in too.
Free home charger and exclusive tariff
If you have off-street parking, we’ll throw in a free home charger, 4,000 free miles of electricity and an extra 1p off overnight rates if you switch to Intelligent Octopus Go - EV Saver.
Easy public charging
If you’ll be charging on the road with Electroverse, we’ll top up your card with 4,000 free miles.
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. Over the last 12 months we’ve hosted over 236 on site events and over 396 webinars!
4.8 star customer service
Not only do we have 4.8 star rated EV salary sacrifice scheme on Trustpilot, but we’re part of Octopus Energy Group, the UK’s largest and most awarded energy supplier. We’ve learnt from the best at Octopus EV.
Free, flexible and no commitments
Our scheme is completely cost neutral to set up and run. There’s no hidden exclusivity agreement and no minimum requirements on uptake.
Early return protection
We know things can change unexpectedly, which is why we have day 1 protection for impactful life events. Read more about our early return protection here.
Access to exclusive benefits for drivers
Drivers get access to our Intelligent Octopus Go - EV Saver tariff which saves them an extra 1p on off-peak rates. Once signed up to EV Saver, drivers will get access to Octoplus, Octopus Energy’s perks programme. Get 2 for £10 Odeon tickets and weekly free drinks from Greggs or Caffè Nero as well as so much more.
All employees get access to renewable energy offer
Just for a company signing up to our EV salary sacrifice scheme, ALL employees get access to £500 extra discount on solar or heat pump home installations compared to our standard offer.
Employee frequently asked questions
We offer all major 100% electric vehicles available on the UK market.
And if a helping hand is needed in deciding which EV is best, our EV specialists team are available to give impartial advice on what car would best suit each person.
It depends on what you choose. If you want to dial in the exact spec you want, then it’ll take longer - your order will be added to the manufacturer’s waiting list, and we can’t control those.
To mitigate any long wait times we offer interim cars, free cancellation and our handy car tracker to stay up to date on the progress of the EV. Or you can pick from our wide variety of secured supply cars where 80% of these are delivered within 90 days.
Yes! If you want to jump the queue, pick one of our most popular cars and you could have it within weeks. How do we do it? We pre-order the most popular cars in a variety of makes and models, so we’ve got cars ready to roll.
70% of all cars we lease are pre-ordered, with the average lead time being between 4-12 weeks. A whopping 80% of our limited offer pre-ordered cars are delivered within 90 days and they’re always price protected from the time we ordered them.
Yes! We offer nearly new EVs to make it even more affordable and sustainable to get behind the wheel. All our nearly new cars have been demo cars, company cars or former leases which have been refreshed to a high standard.
We’re really proud of our second hand offering as it’s even better for the environment to get a nearly new vehicle than buying new.
By being a leasing company we own the whole customer journey and give the best possible experience throughout.
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.
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.
Our online quote tool makes it easy for employees to browse our wide selection of EVs at their leisure, they can narrow down cars based on range, price, lead times and much more. All while being supported by our team every step of the way.
All employees can join our weekly webinars to find out exactly how salary sacrifice works and join 1:1 calls with EV specialists. We’ll also send them monthly newsletters and an employee toolkit so they’re all clued up.
We offer a free Ohme ePod (untethered) home smart charger with standard installation by our engineers from Octopus Energy Services. We’ll also give them 4,000 free miles of electricity when they’re signed up to Intelligent Octopus Go - EV Saver (more on this below).
It’s no problem, in fact we make it really simple! Drivers get an Electroverse card which gives them access to over 850,000+ chargers across the whole of Europe. We’ll also load 4,000 free miles onto their card.
Being part of the Octopus Energy Group means we offer 100% renewable energy tariffs.
If employees can charge at home and they switch to our EV dedicated tariff by Octopus Energy, Intelligent Octopus Go, we give them 4,000 miles worth of energy for free.
We also now offer Intelligent Octopus Go - EV Saver, a tariff that makes off-peak rates 1p cheaper. Each employee signed up can save around £1,076 annually compared to fuelling a petrol car. To switch to this they need a car on lease with Octopus EV, have a compatible EV and charger, and a smart meter. To switch over, head over to your Octopus EV MyAccount and fill out the form.
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.
