A new survey by Tusker has shown that employees who opt for cars under a company’s salary sacrifice scheme select greener, more fuel and tax efficient models than those on a company’s ‘traditional’ contract hire scheme.

Tusker, which launched its SalarySacrifice4Cars scheme (SS4C) in 2008, has recently signed a number of major salary sacrifice contracts, including those with North Yorkshire County Council covering 30,000 employees, and Northumbrian Water covering a further 3,000.

As a result, it has an extensive database of client’s vehicles for analysis purposes, and the results of that survey have shown that ,when it comes to parting with their hard-won cash, employees select cars that are far less polluting, with better fuel consumption, smaller engines and lower carbon emissions.

The study shows that those drivers on Tusker’s salary sacrifice scheme have to date selected cars with an average CO2 of 119.6g/km, compared to those on the contract hire fleet who have chosen vehicles with an average 149.5g/km.

The figure for contract hire vehicles is in line with the findings of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders’ annual new car CO2 report which showed that the average new car sold in the UK in 2009 emitted 149.5g/km of CO2, down 5.4% on the 2008 figure and 21.2% better than the 1997 base level.

The research also shows that cars on its salary sacrifice fleet have an average engine size of 1.4 litres and an average fuel consumption of 60.6mpg, compared to 1.9 litre engines with an average fuel consumption of 50.5mpg on the contract hire fleet.

As a consequence, typical insurance costs are lower on the salary sacrifice cars at an average insurance group of 4.6 compared to 9.6 on the contract hire vehicles.

Tusker managing director David Hosking said: “What these new figures demonstrate is that when employees are parting with their own cash, they select vehicles that are more fuel and tax efficient, with lower carbon emissions, lower fuel costs and lower insurance rates.”

Fleet News's running costs database allows you to search and compare benchmark pence per mile (ppm) costs and other important factors such as carbon dioxide emissions and insurance groups across more than 4,000 popular fleet cars.