Watford-based Tusker, which was one of the UK’s salary sacrifice "early adopters", having launched its SalarySacrifice4Cars scheme (SS4C) in 2008, says that it is seeing huge interest currently and 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 Tusker 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.

'In certain circumstances, where employees are doing high business mileages for example, there may well be a need for larger-engined, more comfortable, less carbon-efficient cars and these will continue to be supplied through traditional company car schemes.

'But we are also finding that salary sacrifice cars are being used for business use as well as for personal use, so there is undoubtedly some cross-over between traditional business cars and salary sacrifice cars.

'We are also seeing many "grey" fleet drivers coming out of their typically older, higher-polluting personal vehicles and into salary sacrifice cars, which is helping employers to address their duty of care responsibilities,' he added.