AstraZeneca electrifies complete fleet in Switzerland

The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has completed the transition to a fully electric vehicle fleet in Switzerland. All of the 100 or so vehicles there are now electric. According to AstraZeneca, it already has over 10,000 electric cars in use worldwide.

The complete switch to electric cars in Switzerland was completed earlier than planned and was one of the first countries within the Group, according to the British pharmaceutical company, which has become particularly well known for its vaccine during the coronavirus pandemic. As Ioana Crisan, Chief Financial Officer of AstraZeneca Switzerland, emphasises, the entire sales force is also travelling electrically: “Knowing that the switch to electric cars poses challenges, we have supported our employees in installing wallboxes in their homes.” Among other things, this required the revision of local guidelines.

The electric car fleet is just one element of AstraZeneca Switzerland’s sustainability strategy. Business air travel is also “minimised in line with strict emission targets.” Furthermore, the company headquarters in Baar is supplied exclusively with sustainable energy, including geothermal probes, energy from hydropower and solar panels. Lars Peters, Market Access Director and Sustainability Officer at AstraZeneca Switzerland, emphasised: “Healthy people need a healthy planet: By reducing harmful emissions with a wide variety of measures, we are promoting cleaner air. This not only has a positive impact on the climate, but also helps to reduce the number of environmentally-related respiratory diseases and other health problems.”

AstraZeneca is also reducing its footprint outside Switzerland and has declared its goal as a company as a whole to become ‘CO2-negative’ by 2030, meaning that the company wants to save more CO2 than it emits by the end of the decade. The company’s fleet ambitions have been known for several years: in 2019, the pharmaceutical company joined the Climate Group’s EV100 initiative and thus committed to the goal of fully electrifying its entire fleet by 2030. In 2023, AstraZeneca was also one of the signatories of an open letter to the EU. In this letter, 30 large companies called for a regulation according to which only electric company cars and delivery vans are to be newly registered in the EU from 2030.

astrazeneca.ch, 20min.ch (both in German)