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Factors including limited EV supply, rising leasing costs, and wider economic concerns are hampering take-up of salary sacrifice schemes, the Association of Fleet Professionals (AFP) has said.
The organisation warned that although employees were keen in theory to join salary sacrifice schemes, current conditions were putting them off and preventing many schemes from fulfilling their potential.
In addition, the AFP said a lack of engagement by some providers was also a problem.
The organisation's chair Paul Hollick said: "We're picking up a general sense of disappointment from our fleets around salary sacrifice. This isn't to say that there aren't successful sal-sac schemes out there but there seems to be a widespread agreement that many just haven't taken off in the manner that employers had hoped thanks to a whole series of problems.
"Pricing, supply, the economy and service are all issues. These schemes are generally built on low personal taxation for electric vehicles (EVs) and as everyone knows, lease rates for these cars have increased quite dramatically while waiting times continue to lengthen. This seriously affects the basic attractiveness of sal-sac for employees."
Hollick said that affordability was being additionally affected by wider economic conditions, when people felt their personal finances were increasingly under pressure.
He said: "There's a potential question emerging about whether businesses should even be promoting sal-sac at a time when some people may be struggling to meet their heating bill or their mortgage payment.
"Finally, while there are good sal-sac companies out there, of course, others are proving to be less effective. From member feedback, this appears to be especially the case where providers have promised to put a scheme in place with almost no assistance from within the host company's fleet, HR and procurement departments.
"In our experience, to make sal-sac work, there needs to be a pro-active partnership between the provider and the employer."
Hollick said that while the core idea of salary sacrifice remained attractive, until these issues were resolved it was difficult to see take-up among employees improving markedly.
He said: "Just a few months ago, many fleets were hoping that that their sal-sac scheme would be an effective doorway to help those on middle and even lower salaries get into a new EV - especially if those people were part of the grey fleet - but the numbers are just not currently adding up. This is often the case even when manufacturers offer significant levels of support.
"None of this is to undermine the concept of sal-sac. It remains an idea with huge attractiveness for fleets but issues such as poor EV supply, rising lease rates, the general state of the economy and individual service issues are genuine problems and it is difficult to see sal-sac fulfilling its considerable potential across the fleet sector until these improve."
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