Salary sacrifice is the biggest growth area for EVs this year, but many companies feel shut out, says Julian Mensah, founder and CEO of Voltric.

“Our employees would like a salary sacrifice scheme but we’ve looked into it and it won’t work for our business.” If I’ve had this conversation once, I’ve had it a hundred times. In meetings, at conferences… heck, even in the supermarket car park.

Salary sacrifice is quietly doing the heavy lifting for electric vehicle adoption. According to the BVRLA, the number of vehicles procured via salary sacrifice rose 61% year-on-year to April 2025, taking the total to more than 100,000, while 87% of all salary sacrifice vehicles are electric. That momentum matters for fleets because it moves drivers into EVs without putting financial strain on the business.

So why do so many businesses still think salary sacrifice will not work for them? Three themes come up again and again. First, staff churn. In sectors where people move on every 18 to 24 months, finance directors worry about being stuck with long leases and hefty early termination costs. We have met large UK employers who shut schemes down for exactly that reason.

The second element is company size. I have sat with companies of around 200 people who were told they did not meet a minimum headcount for a lease-based salary sacrifice programme. The third issue is admin and waiting times. Checks and balances are important, but we meet teams who endure months of paperwork, repeated credit checks and delivery lead times of more than six months.

Now consider the UK business base. Of the 5.6 million businesses, 98% employ fewer than 50 people. Almost half (49%) are between zero and four years old. These firms are fast-moving and influential in their markets. They are also the most likely to be told they are too small, too young or too fluid for a traditional salary sacrifice lease.

A new path to travel

All of those are valid businesses to drive the EV transition. They run essential services, supply chains and client teams. Yet, the current approach can leave them on the sidelines, even when their people are asking for EVs and their sustainability plans need real miles in electric cars.

The fix is a salary sacrifice subscription. It is still salary sacrifice, just in a more flexible package that matches how modern teams work. Instead of locking a company into a multi-year lease, a subscription wraps the car, insurance, servicing, maintenance, road tax and breakdown cover into one monthly price and lets you adapt if people join, move role or leave. In short, it gives fleets the certainty of traditional salary sacrifice with the agility of a subscription.

This is exactly what we offer at Voltric. It’s a salary sacrifice subscription you can cancel if an employee leaves. The employee can change their car whenever needed. There are no lengthy credit checks or deposits, and no minimum order quantities. Vehicles arrive in around two weeks, with routine servicing arranged directly with the driver. In short, it makes salary sacrifice work for the business and its employees.

Back to that supermarket car park. After we talked through the myths, the person who had come over to admire my latest EV – and who turned out to be an HR manager for a local company – admitted her people had been asking for EVs for ages. I explained how we could set a sensible cap on vehicle price and let her team browse live, transparent pricing, how we can deliver cars within a fortnight and how her business has total flexibility. For the first time, EVs were a real possibility for her employees, and the business could finally look towards real progress on its fleet emissions.

So, next time you think “it won’t work for our business”, consider what will: a salary sacrifice subscription built for the way your business really runs.