Healthcare and pharmaceutical industry fleets: Taking their sustainability temperature

This year’s Industry Fleet Sustainability Ranking looks at eight different industries in Europe, diving deep into the stand-out fleet trends from the past couple of years. To create the sustainability ranking, we perform in-depth benchmarking on each industry. Detailed reports for six industries are also available to download.

In the third blog of our series exploring sustainability in industry fleets, we take a close look at the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry in Europe, and how its fleets have changed in recent years. For more insights, download the full benchmark report!

The C1 segment (i.e., compact, non-premium cars) remained the most popular passenger car segment in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry – but the fleet share of C1 cars decreased by eight percentage points over the year, dropping from 22% to 14%.

The popularity of SUVs continues to grow in almost all industries, and the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry is no exception. Half of the most popular car segments in this industry are SUVs, adding up to a 47% fleet share.

The Toyota Corolla took the top spot as 2021’s most popular car model, but BMW is also gaining popularity in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry: the top 10 ranking included three BMW models compared with only one in 2020. Meanwhile, Volkswagen’s popularity decreased, with only two of its models cracking the top 10 in 2021 – half as many as in 2020.

Companies are facing all kinds of pressures to reduce CO2 emissions from their fleets, and, accordingly, the fleet share of diesel cars is decreasing year on year. Conversely, battery electric vehicles (BEVs), hybrids and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) continue to grow in popularity. Both hybrids and PHEVs saw significant increases in their healthcare and pharmaceutical fleet shares from 2020 to 2021, with hybrids increasing by 9.9 percentage points and PHEVs by nine percentage points.

The share of diesel cars in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry in Europe continues to decline significantly each year, while petrol has stabilised. In 2019, diesel made up 78.3% of cars in healthcare and pharmaceutical fleets, but this had dropped to 49.4% by 2021. Petrol has remained fairly steady over the past few years, with its fleet share staying around 12%.

Almost all countries have seen increases in the share of BEVs, although at different rates. The Netherlands saw the largest BEV increase in healthcare and pharmaceutical fleets between 2020 and 2021 – jumping from under 20% to 49.2%. Meanwhile, though, in eastern and southern Europe, BEVs are yet to take off, and most fleet shares hover around 1% or less.

Poland and Hungary saw the largest increases in hybrids in their healthcare and pharmaceutical fleets between 2020 and 2021, with hybrids now accounting for 58.1% in Poland and 51.3% in Hungary.

Following widespread uptake of BEVs and PHEVs in Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK and Sweden, average CO₂ fleet emissions have dropped significantly in these countries. Sweden has the lowest 2021 average for the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry, at 42.3 grams per kilometre. This is primarily driven by its large share of PHEVs, which has reached 63.3%.

As in other European industries, more companies in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sphere are moving towards hybrids and BEVs, generating lower fleet CO₂ emissions. Thanks to more government incentives and restrictions, plus the pressure from consumers seeking more responsible companies, the momentum behind lower-emission vehicles has grown noticeably in recent years. We look forward to seeing the trend accelerate further!