The Leaderboard aims to establish a new expectation – and competitive advantage – for what it means to to produce a truly clean car: not just an electric vehicle (EV), but an EV with an equitable, sustainable, and fossil-free supply chain.
The Leaderboard covers two main aspects of company policies and practices: those focused on building fossil-free and environmentally sustainable supply chains, and those focused on ensuring respect for human rights and responsible sourcing throughout their supply chains. Companies are given a percentage score enabling an assessment of both how close each automaker is to the scorecard’s expectations of what constitutes a clean car, as well as comparisons between automakers.
This year’s analysis includes 1,584 data points and evaluates each company across 88 indicators, assessing their performance on addressing climate, environmental, and human rights impacts within their supply chains. The Leaderboard is based on an analysis of publicly available company reporting that has received board level sign off. The cut-off date for company disclosures to be included in the analysis was July 01, 2024.
Key findings
This year’s analysis shows that the industry continues to make steady progress: the total average score across all 18 automakers rose by 3 percentage points in the 2025 edition compared to the previous year.
Improvements in performance are also closely correlated with areas that have been targeted by recently approved regulations in the EU, such as the EU Battery Regulation and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).
However, for the third consecutive year, no automaker achieved a total score of over 50%, with the total average score across all automakers remaining at just 22%. The Leaderboard reveals that many automakers have put in place robust policies and commitments, but are falling short when it comes to the hard work of implementation.
The industry can, and must, do better. The current picture of spotty performance across different issues provides opportunities for companies to radically improve their scores by replicating best practices: over half of the indicators are fully met by at least one company and companies could increase their scores to over 70% by matching the practices of their highest performing peers across different areas.