Selling Cars and Accelerating the move to Zero Carbon

My day job is very much about IT, systems and software for use by Car dealers.

Electric Car Early Adopter

However, I’ve been an early adopter of driving electric vehicles, and have become more aware of the need for a more sustainable lifestyle– both personally and in business.

We’ve moved our company car fleet to full electric over the past two years, which is a great step forward.

Only about a quarter of our team have the use of a company car, which for me means that 75% don’t drive one, and generally don’t have an electric car.

I’m part of a number of groups which are involved in the adoption of Electric Vehicles for example I was, until recently, the Web Manager for the official Tesla Owners Group in the UK.

How can we increase the take up of Electric Vehicles

One of the key questions that we discuss regularly is how to increase the take-up of electric vehicles. From a sustainability perspective this is on my radar, but from a professional perspective it's an opportunity for car dealers to sell more cars.

There is clearly a lot of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt)in the general media about the issues with Electric vehicles (not enough range, not reliable, not really that environmentally friendly etc) and that message is starting to get through.

However, the main issue today (beyond supply constraints) is the up-front price of an Electric Car. It is clear that for many this remains a major barrier.

The Incentives for Company Drivers are High

For the company car driver, this issue is largely solved. With very low Benefit in Kind for driving full electric vehicles, along with low running costs, it’s almost a no-brainer for any company car driver to consider having an electric car as their next vehicle!

For my team, moving from hybrid Hyundai Ioniq to Tesla Model 3s was the equivalent of a £1000 pa pay rise!

I’m sure that a Tesla is also perceived as a more “premium” car than the Hyundai(nothing against the Hyundai – it’s a great car and the new model looks awesome!). This is before considering the saving in private running costs (electric cost per mile is significantly less than diesel or petrol fuel). It makes sense to my company as we get the 100% First Year Allowances, low depreciation and lower running costs as well.

However, this only applies to the 1:4 of my employees.

But what about the non Company Car Drivers?

A couple of years ago, I decided to do something to make this equation work for employees who don’t have a company car.

After a good deal of searching, I found a leasing company that provided a fully managed Electric Vehicle Salary Sacrifice scheme.

With this, I could allow my employees to lease a car – through the company on a salary sacrifice basis. This lease included everything including home charger installation, insurance, maintenance – everything but the fuel. It's simple for me as they deal with everything directly with the employee, all I have to do is sign a Direct Debit Mandate and add a Salary Sacrifice deduction of the monthly payment to the payslip!

Salary Sacrifice Schemes sell cars!

This has meant that employees who are thinking of a new car, are seriously looking at this scheme. They pretty much save the tax and NI on the monthly payments (which can add up to 40% !) and more than offsets the additional cost of the car. We are starting to see the benefits of this, we already have another non-company EV in use by staff and a couple more looking at new cars under the scheme.

An opportunity for indirect fleet sales

What strikes me is that with car dealers as customers, I’ve never come across a dealer who is using this as a “fleet” sales option.

To not sell fleets of cars to companies, but offer them an Employee benefit – where employees can buy a car from the dealer on a Salary Sacrifice Scheme.

Do any dealers do this ?

Is this something that any dealers are doing today? Are we shy about this sort of solution? Or maybe I’ve just have never been offered it?

By allowing employers to offer this benefit will help to accelerate the move to Zero Carbon in terms of motoring even faster in my opinion. From an employer perspective it’s almost a no-brainer –the employee loves the benefit, the employer gains extra staff loyalty (as the employee needs to settle the agreement if they leave the company!!). The dealer has employers “selling” their cars for them.