Consumer goods fleets: Discover the latest benchmarks and trends

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

To kick off our blog series exploring sustainability in industry fleets, we are examining the consumer goods 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 consumer goods industry – but our data shows it is slowly decreasing in popularity, dropping from a 30% share of the market in 2019 to 24% in 2021. Meanwhile, the segment seeing the largest increase in uptake is SUV-D1s: back in 2019, it did not even crack the top 10, but in 2021 it represents 13% of the European consumer goods market. SUVs in general continue to enjoy growing popularity, with the total share of SUVs doubling between 2019 (18%) and 2021 (36%).

In 2021, the Toyota Corolla knocked the Skoda Octavia from the top spot to become the most popular car in the consumer goods industry. We also saw Ford models becoming more popular, with three making it into the top 10 compared to only one in 2019.

Aided by government incentives and stricter emission targets, we have seen the share of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), hybrids and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) grow significantly, while the share of diesel vehicles continues its steady decline. In 2019, diesel cars made up 77.3% of cars in the consumer goods industry, but by 2021 this had dropped to 49.7%. Over the same time, BEVs have increased from 2.4% to 5.2%, hybrids have increased from 4.1% to 18.7% and PHEVs have increased from 2.5% to 12.9%.

Greece, Italy, Sweden and the UK all saw big increases in their share of hybrids and PHEVs in consumer goods fleets. In Sweden, for example, PHEVs accounted for 68.5% of all vehicles in this sector in 2021. It was a similar story in the UK, with more than one in every four vehicles being a PHEV.

While we have seen a significant surge in the overall share of BEVs in consumer goods fleets, a closer look at the country-level data reveals big differences across Europe. Several Northern European countries dramatically increased their share of BEVs in 2021 compared to 2019, including Finland (where BEVs reached 6.9%), Sweden (10%) and Norway (29.9%, surpassing the Netherlands). In Southern and Eastern Europe, however, it is clear that fleet electrification, especially where BEVs are concerned, has not yet taken off.

Finland, Greece, Sweden and Norway saw large decreases in their consumer goods fleets’ CO2 emissions in 2021 compared to 2019, largely due to the higher share of BEVs and PHEVs in these fleets. Leading the way in the drive to zero emissions is Sweden, which has the lowest average CO2 emissions at 50.1 grams per km, while France has the highest rate at 128.1 grams per km

In Europe’s consumer goods industry, more companies are moving towards PHEVs and hybrids to lower fleet CO2 emissions – and we expect this trend to continue in the future. Thanks to more government incentives and restrictions, plus the pressure from consumers seeking more responsible companies, the momentum behind lower-emission vehicles grew noticeably in recent years. The good news is the acceleration of zero-emission mobility shows no sign of slowing down.