A Decade of Green Motoring with Fleet Evolution

It’s summer, 2010 and the first Apple iPad has just been released. Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” is playing softly in the background in a bar at Barton Marina, Staffordshire. Our founder, Andrew Leech, is peering over the barges on charge, talking about frustrations with salary sacrifice cars with friends. Surely boring any that will listen, but soon, on the other side of the marina, he anticipates we’ll be seeing row upon row of cars on charge… This has been Fleet Evolution’s decade in green motoring.

In those days, Andy worked for Northgate Arinso. They’re a HR software and outsourcing company managing the payroll and employees of a third of the UK’s workforce. Andy was frustrated. He’d been asked to find a company to provide salary sacrifice cars to Northgate’s customers. To no avail, he found no one to fulfil the bill.

Most said “if you employ less than 1,000 people, the scheme won’t work as you were too small”…. Essentially, blaming companies for what was in fact a supplier issue. They made the whole scheme so complicated that they couldn’t make margin from any but the largest employers!

Andy couldn’t understand that. After all, salary sacrifice cars were just company cars with a salary deduction. Any company could have company cars or childcare vouchers, so what’s the big deal? Plus, electric cars were definitely coming, and salary sacrifice was the best way to promote these.

Andy’s friends challenged him with a comment that would change his life: “well, why don’t you do it if it’s so easy?” and just 3 months later, Fleet Evolution was born!

Getting into Salary Sacrifice

Fleet Evolution were set up 8^th October 2010. They had one simple mission, to get employees into green cars. The simplest way to do that was through salary sacrifice. To make this more palatable to employers, we had to remove the risk and admin associated with such schemes. As well, it couldn’t hurt to streamline the whole process, plus wait for electric cars to take hold. So, it was a couple of years before we were ready. Though, in 2012, we were ready to sign our first customers.

Our First Customers…

An engineering company in Tamworth was set up in a day and had their first car in 3 weeks. Since then, we’ve never looked back! Today, we still deliver schemes quickly with virtually no leaver risk and very little admin for the employer. However, other things have certainly changed…

Getting into Green Motoring

In 2013, we introduced the first salary sacrifice scheme focussed on electric cars. We imported Nissan Leaf’s from Japan for a customer with 2,000 employees and provided temporary petrol/diesel cars for when they needed more range. It’s something unique that we still offer to this day!

However, in those days, our most popular car was more likely to be a Nissan Juke or Ford Fiesta. You see electrics were very limited then. You could either get a Leaf that did 70 miles on a frosty day or a Tesla that cost the same as a terraced house.

Moving Onwards and Upwards

In 2016, we became the first salary sacrifice “Go Ultra-Low” company. This emphasises our focus and speciality for electrics and plug-in hybrids. Though, the product range still wasn’t quite there, and government policy was haphazard!

So, What Has this Decade Brought?

Well, over the decade we estimate we’ve reduced the CO2 of our customers’ employees by 4,000 tonnes! We’ve moved thousands of employees who never had a new car before into brand new green cars! Now, 85% of our orders are for pure electric cars! We challenge our customers to give us a reason why an electric will not work for them. Will free home and workplace chargers sway them? We rarely hear a reason or obstacle we can’t overcome.

Looking Back Over the Years in Green Motoring

The 1920s saw the demise of electric vehicles. They missed their moment, partly due to materials post-WW1. 2020 is the year they rise from the dead, and we’re at the forefront of the adoption. After all, we started with this vision 10 years ago and our proposition is as simple now as it was then.

Salary sacrifice isn’t complicated. It doesn’t need to be a risk and it shouldn’t be something you’re reluctant to introduce. It’s simply the easiest way to get your employees into green cars, at no cost and virtually no risk to you! With 25 employers a month choosing our scheme, it’s taking some time! Even still, the message is getting through loud and clear! Imagine what the next ten years will bring!

Interested in going electric? Get the guide!