Future-proofing benefits for the 2030 EV mandate with salary sacrifice charging

The 2030 phase-out of new petrol and diesel car sales is not a distant policy target any more. It is a fixed point that fleet, HR and finance teams are already planning towards, and the ZEV mandate is pushing manufacturers to sell more electric cars in the UK every year between now and then.

That means the number of employees driving an EV, whether through a company car, a personal salary sacrifice lease, or their own purchase, is going to keep climbing steadily rather than in one sudden jump. Benefits packages that only work for petrol and diesel drivers are going to look dated fast.

What the mandate actually requires

The ZEV mandate sets a rising percentage of zero emission vehicles that manufacturers must sell each year, increasing annually on the way to the 2030 cut-off for new petrol and diesel car sales (hybrids get a short extension to 2035). Manufacturers respond by pricing and marketing EVs more aggressively to hit their targets, which is already visible in lease pricing.

For employers, the practical effect is simple: more of your workforce will be offered, or will actively ask for, an electric car over the next few years. Fleet and HR teams that have not planned for the running costs side of that shift will be dealing with it under time pressure.

Charging is the part most plans miss

Most EV benefit planning focuses on the vehicle: which leasing provider, which salary sacrifice scheme, which company car policy. Charging costs are treated as an afterthought, usually left to expense claims or ignored altogether.

That gap matters more as adoption grows. Charging is the one running cost of an EV that does not fall as fast as people expect, particularly for the roughly nine million UK households with no off-street parking who cannot charge cheaply at home and rely on the 76,000+ public chargepoint network instead.

If your benefits strategy has an EV lease scheme but no charging offer, employees are covering that cost entirely out of taxed income, at a time when you are actively encouraging them into electric cars.

Why salary sacrifice charging is the natural next step

The Charge Scheme is built to bolt on to any existing EV salary sacrifice or company car scheme, so it does not require switching leasing provider or restructuring an existing benefit. Employees pay for charging, at home, at work or via 76,000+ public chargers, through a gross salary deduction, saving 20 to 50% depending on their tax band.

That makes it a low-effort addition for HR and fleet teams who are already managing the mandate-driven growth in EV uptake:

• No change to your existing lease or company car provider
• No new procurement process, since the deduction runs through payroll like any other salary sacrifice item
• Immediate relevance to every current EV driver, not just future joiners

Planning ahead rather than catching up

Adding a charging benefit before demand peaks means:

• Your EV benefit is complete from day one for new joiners, rather than needing an awkward retrofit
• HR is not fielding ad hoc questions about how to expense home charging
• Fleet and finance teams have accurate, centralised charging cost data instead of scattered receipts

It also signals to employees that the organisation has thought through the whole cost of running an EV, not just the lease payment, which matters when you are trying to encourage uptake ahead of 2030.

What to check now

Whether you already run an EV salary sacrifice scheme or a company car fleet, a few questions are worth asking today:

• Do current EV drivers have any structured way to claim or offset charging costs?
• Is your fleet or HR team ready to answer charging questions as more employees switch to EVs?
• Does your existing scheme provider support a charging bolt-on, or would this need a separate product?

Full detail on how the bolt-on works is on the how it works page, and fleet and procurement teams can see the specifics for company car fleets.

Next steps

If you want to see what adding a charging benefit would look like against your current or projected EV headcount, book a demo and we will talk through the numbers.