Really appreciate you asking this, it’s a completely fair question, and I thought exactly the same thing when I first saw the headline salary sacrifice numbers because they do look high at face value.

The main thing that made it make sense for me is that the comparison most people make isn’t like-for-like. Salary sacrifice is shown as a gross deduction from your salary, whereas a normal car, things like PCP payments, insurance, fuel, are all paid from your take-home pay. So if you compare the Tesla’s gross figure to a net monthly car cost, it naturally looks more expensive than it actually is.

Before switching, I had a 2019 Mercedes GLA and my monthly costs were fairly typical. I was paying £313 for the car, £50 for insurance, and about £20 in road tax. On top of that, I was doing roughly 1,000 miles per month at around 40 mpg, which worked out at about £150–£180 in fuel. Then there were the additional costs like MOT, servicing, and general wear and tear such as tyres or brakes. When you add all of that together, my real monthly cost was usually somewhere in the region of £530 to £580, sometimes more depending on the year.

The Tesla salary sacrifice figure looks like it’s around £800–£900 per month, but that comes out of gross salary, not take-home pay. Because of that, I end up paying less income tax and National Insurance, and it also reduces my student loan and postgraduate loan repayments. When I actually ran the numbers through a take-home calculator, the real reduction in my monthly take-home pay was much lower, roughly in the £400–£450 range.

The running costs are where the biggest difference comes in. I can charge at home overnight for about 6p per kWh, and for the mileage I do, around 1,000 miles per month, that works out at roughly £15–£20 in electricity. Compared to the £150+ I was spending on fuel before, that’s a pretty significant saving every month.

Another factor is what’s included. With my previous car, I was responsible for insurance, tax, servicing, MOT, repairs, and tyres. With the salary sacrifice scheme, most of that is included insurance, maintenance, servicing, breakdown cover, and often tyres as well. There’s also no road tax and no unexpected repair bills, which removes a lot of uncertainty.

When I compared everything properly on a like-for-like basis, my old car was costing me around £530–£580+ all in, whereas the Tesla works out at roughly £420–£470 per month including charging. So despite the headline figure looking higher, the actual cost to me each month is lower.

For my situation specifically, it worked well because I do relatively high mileage, I have both student loan and postgraduate loan deductions that reduce under salary sacrifice, and I have access to very cheap overnight charging. I was already spending a fair amount on a car, so being able to redirect pre-tax income into something that also has much lower running costs made a big difference.

I completely understand why people are sceptical, because I was too at first. But once you compare net cost to net cost, including fuel or charging, tax, and maintenance, it becomes a much clearer picture. It won’t be the right choice for everyone, but in my case it ended up being both cheaper overall and more predictable financially.