Salary-sacrifice electric cars, chargers, solar and batteries for your team.
Perx is a salary-sacrifice scheme developed by Covase Ltd, a BVRLA-member fleet and leasing broker established in 2003, with the solar, home charger and battery elements delivered in partnership with Heva Energy and vehicle funding through Lex Autolease and Ogilvie Fleet. Orbis IO's connected-vehicle-data platform sits underneath, managing each car in life. Covase majority-owns Orbis IO; the two are separate legal entities with common directors. Same installer network, same HMRC tax treatment, so businesses can run salary sacrifice for cars, chargers, batteries and solar through one employer relationship.
Heva pioneered the UK salary-sacrifice route to home solar, batteries and charging. Perx is Covase's salary-sacrifice scheme, delivered as a module within the Orbis IO platform and powered by its connected-vehicle-data layer. It is the only UK salary-sacrifice scheme we're aware of that includes the electric car alongside solar, battery and charger. So the vehicle, the charger, the solar and the battery run through one gross-salary deduction, under one Covase employer relationship, with the Orbis IO platform managing each car in life. Not a car scheme with an energy add-on, and not an energy scheme that stops at the driveway. Both, in one.
As covered in May 2026 in The Express, MSN, Solar Power Portal, Birmingham Live, Transport + Energy and FemaleFirst — Read our take →
What Perx delivers to the employer
No employer cost
The scheme is gross-deducted from employee salaries. No setup fee, no per-employee licence, no committed budget on the employer side.
£770 to £1,600 net NIC surplus, per participating employee, per year
Employer Class 1 secondary National Insurance at 15% is removed from the sacrificed slice of pay, and the Class 1A due on the benefit is funded within the sacrifice structure, so the relief is retained in full. On our own published illustrations that is £774 per year on a car-only package and £1,595 per year on a car plus home-energy bundle, per participating employee.
No installer admin
Heva's partner network handles quoting, scheduling, grid permissions and commissioning end-to-end. Typical install window: two weeks from employee acceptance.
One employer relationship
Existing Orbis fleet intelligence customers run cars, chargers, batteries and solar through the same payroll integration — rather than four separate vendor relationships across four payroll lines.
What it looks like in practice
The full four-in-one, through Perx
One live Perx quote, read three ways. An employee on £40,000, a basic-rate taxpayer, taking a Ford Puma Gen-E with a 7kW charge point, 3kWp of solar and a 15kWh battery on a 48-month term, all through one salary-sacrifice deduction of £799.53 a month gross.
£799.53 gross, less £159.91 income tax relief and £63.96 National Insurance relief, plus £19.95 of company-car BIK in year one. A higher-rate taxpayer keeps more of the relief, so the same package costs them less.
Class 1 National Insurance the employer no longer pays on the sacrificed pay, after the Class 1A due on the benefit is funded inside the sacrifice.
Estimated saving on energy bills from the 3kWp array and the 15kWh battery, storing cheap overnight electricity and releasing it at peak.
Live Perx quote, August 2026, and subject to change. One quote, not a price list: the vehicle, your salary and tax band, and the company-car BIK rate, which steps from 4% to 9% across the term, all move the outcome. The car runs on the established HMRC salary-sacrifice treatment for zero-emission company cars; the charge point, solar and battery run under Heva's existing HMRC-approved scheme for those elements. Ask us for a quote against your own vehicle and salary.
Home energy on its own, through Heva
The three examples below cover the home-energy elements on their own, without a car. The difference in monthly cost is the vehicle: a car is the largest component of any salary-sacrifice package, and it is the part an energy-only scheme cannot include. These are live examples from the Heva scheme, as reported in May 2026. Salary sacrifice removes income tax and National Insurance from the slice of pay used to fund the equipment, which is why net monthly costs sit well below retail.
A home battery, installed in a rented property. Moves with the employee if they change address.
A 15kWh battery that stores cheap overnight electricity and releases it during peak hours.
The full stack — solar panels, battery and EV charge point — through one payroll line.
Worked examples from The Express, May 2026. Net costs are after income tax and NI savings; actual figures depend on individual tax position.
For the technical detail on home chargers in salary sacrifice — what HMRC says, what's included, what it costs — see our salary sacrifice home charger guide.
Who's already on it
NHS and the National Lottery Community Fund have signed up as Heva employers. Demand tripled in the month before the May 2026 press coverage.
Ryan Griffin, 29, MD of OVAGLAS Group (Yorkshire). Tried the scheme on his own house first — a Tesla Powerwall 3 and 6kW solar array, retail £17,000, net £8,700. Then opened it to his 20 staff. More than half signed up.
James Green, 36, sales manager at Forktruck Solutions (Crewe). 9.4kW solar plus Powerwall 3. £7,300 saved in tax, electricity bill down from £2,000 to £800 a year, and crucially kept under the £100,000 adjusted-net-income threshold — retaining £6,000/year in childcare support that would otherwise have been lost.
UK businesses with 20–500 employees.
Existing salary-sacrifice-for-cars schemes welcome — Perx is additive, not a replacement. You'll know it's right for you if any of these apply:
- Your CFO has been asking about the per-employee NI saving the press are quoting.
- You already run EV salary sacrifice and want to expand the bundle to home energy without changing your existing fleet provider.
- Staff have started asking about the Heva press coverage and you need a coherent answer.
From first call to first install, in ~6 weeks.
15-minute call
We walk through your headcount, current benefits stack, and any existing salary-sacrifice provider.
Costed plan
We model the participation curve and the NI saving at your headcount — returned as a one-page plan.
Launch
Payroll integration, employee portal, first installs typically within 4–6 weeks of go-ahead.
How does salary sacrifice work for solar panels?
How does salary sacrifice work for solar panels, step by step?
You agree to give up a fixed amount of gross salary each month, and your employer uses it to pay for the solar panels, battery or charge point installed at your home. Because the deduction comes out before income tax and National Insurance, you never pay tax on that slice of salary, which is where the saving comes from. A basic-rate taxpayer keeps roughly 28% that would otherwise have gone to HMRC, and a higher-rate taxpayer roughly 42%. The equipment is installed at your house, you use the electricity it generates, and the deduction runs for the length of the agreement. There is no deposit and no credit application, because you are not borrowing the money. The cost is spread across your payslips instead.
Can you add solar to an existing salary sacrifice scheme?
Yes, and it does not disturb the arrangement you already have. If you are part-way through a salary-sacrifice car agreement, the solar, battery or charger is added as a second deduction line on the same payslip, running on its own term alongside the car. You do not have to wait for the car agreement to end or renegotiate it. The same applies at employer level: where a company already runs an EV-only scheme with another provider, the home-energy elements can be added without unpicking the existing scheme. If you already have solar panels on the roof and want to add a battery, that works too, because the battery is quoted and installed as a standalone item.
What's the catch with salary sacrifice solar panels?
There are real trade-offs, and they are worth knowing before you sign. Lowering your gross salary can reduce anything calculated from it, including statutory maternity pay, mortgage affordability assessments and, for some schemes, pension contributions. Your salary cannot drop below the National Minimum Wage, which limits what lower earners can sacrifice. If you leave your employer mid-agreement you settle the balance, transfer it, or return the equipment, so it is a genuine multi-year commitment. And the saving depends on your tax band, so it is worth less to a basic-rate taxpayer than the headline higher-rate figures suggest. The arrangement itself is a long-established use of the salary-sacrifice rules rather than a loophole, but whether it suits you depends on your own circumstances, and it is worth taking advice before committing.
Operator questions
Who provides the solar panels and battery storage in the Perx scheme?
They're delivered through Perx's partnership with Heva Energy, who pioneered the UK salary-sacrifice route to home solar, batteries and charging and who also run their own scheme for those elements. Perx is developed by Covase, with vehicle funding through Lex Autolease and Ogilvie Fleet, and Orbis IO's connected-vehicle-data platform managing each car in life. What Perx adds is the electric car. It is the only UK salary-sacrifice scheme we're aware of that includes the vehicle alongside solar, battery and charger, so all four sit within one Perx offering, on one payroll deduction, rather than being arranged separately.
What's the minimum headcount to launch Perx for our team?
There's no hard minimum, but Perx is most economical at 20+ employees because the employer NI saving scales linearly with participating headcount. At smaller scale the scheme still works — the employee tax-and-NI saving is independent of employer size — but the per-launch fixed effort (payroll integration, employee comms, portal setup) is roughly the same whether you're onboarding 5 employees or 200. Most launches we run sit between 30 and 250 participating employees.
Can we run Perx alongside an existing EV salary-sacrifice provider?
Yes. If you already have a company-car scheme running with another provider, you do not have to unpick it to start Perx. The two coexist on a single payslip, and employees can take one, the other, or both. Where an existing arrangement is mid-contract, the practical route is usually to run Perx alongside it and let employees move across at their own renewal, rather than breaking agreements early. Perx is a full four-in-one scheme in its own right: the electric car, the charger, solar and battery storage inside one Perx offering, on one payroll deduction. Employers already committed elsewhere on the car often start with the home-energy elements, which is the part an EV-only scheme cannot cover, but that is a starting point rather than the limit of what Perx does.
What happens to the agreement if an employee leaves the company mid-contract?
Three standard options, agreed upfront with the employee at sign-up: transfer the sacrifice agreement to their new employer if the new employer operates a compatible scheme; settle the residual balance personally and keep the equipment (or, for batteries and EV chargers, take them to a new address); or return the equipment for a pro-rata settlement. The choice is the employee's. Employer exposure is limited to the months of sacrifice already taken — no balloon liability sits with the employer.
How long does payroll integration take?
Typically 2–3 weeks of elapsed time, with a couple of hours of involvement from your payroll team. Perx integrates with the major UK payroll platforms via standard salary-sacrifice deduction lines — the technical work is on our side. We deliver the deduction file each pay run; your payroll team reviews and posts it. Once the integration is live for one component (cars, charger, battery, solar) adding the others adds zero further integration cost.
Who owns the installed equipment — employer, employee, or finance partner?
The finance partner — typically Covase or a partnered funder — owns the equipment for the duration of the salary-sacrifice contract. The employer never holds title to the equipment, which keeps it off the employer's balance sheet and avoids any depreciation or asset-disposal liability. At contract end the employee usually has a settlement-and-keep option, which is the most common outcome for solar and battery components.
What does Perx cost the employer per launch?
Nothing direct. There is no setup fee, no per-employee licence, and no minimum spend. The employer-side cost is the internal effort to introduce the scheme to staff and run the payroll deduction file — typically a few hours per month of HR/payroll time once the launch is complete. The employer NI saving covers any internal admin cost from the first participating employee.
Start with a 15-minute call.
Most Perx launches start with a 15-minute call. No agenda, no sales sequence — we'll talk through whether the participation mix at your headcount actually delivers the NI saving the press are quoting. Before that, you can work out the indicative net cost of an EV or home-energy package through salary sacrifice in about 20 seconds.
Operated by Covase Ltd · BVRLA member #2181 · Established 2003
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Perx is provided by Covase Ltd, powered by Heva Energy. Tax savings are indicative and depend on individual circumstances. Vehicle and energy product availability subject to eligibility.