Report cards: Ford, Mercedes, Tesla lead new survey on EV sustainability & human rights

You won’t find any official UN report card on EV manufacturing – although the council’s trade body has previously sounded the alarm on the mining boom [↗] – but now there’s this: Lead the Charge, a self-appointed watchdog for the car industry.

Launched in March 2023, Lead the Charge is built around the idea of an industry scorecard, tracking and ranking the efforts of leading carmakers to ensure every part of their EV supply chain is “equitable, sustainable, and 100% fossil free”.

“The Leaderboard analyses publicly available reporting from 18 of the leading automotive manufacturers in the world,” Lead the Charge says. “It ranks their efforts to eliminate emissions, environmental harms, and human rights violations from their supply chains.

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How does Lead the Charge assess each brand?

Lead the Charge says its methodology is built on publicly available reporting from the brands themselves (as required by governments and various boards), focusing on aspects of sustainability and human rights within supply chains.

Although the organisation offers a full list of indicators and score attributions, the accuracy of its methodology might vary across different brands depending on their supply chain transparency.

The process has also had significant updates and amendments for 2024, including changes in definitions and improved precision – it says – in measuring “pre- and post-consumer scrap” and battery recycling.

2024 results

The full list of 18 brands can be found on the Lead the Charge website. We’ve listed the top 10 below.

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This year’s report says that while all brands have failed on indigenous peoples’ rights (with 11 of the 18 tracked brands achieving a score of 0% on that metric), there has been marked progress in reducing supply chain emissions.

None have impressed the organisation, however.

Ford’s new position atop the chart comes off a score of 42%, thanks to improvements in the mining, production and transport of its steel and aluminium – meaning that even the best performing brands are well behind on the report’s criteria.

The organisation says Tesla’s leap from ninth to third is thanks to the American carmaker “becoming the first automaker to disclose disaggregated scope 3 emissions for its steel, aluminium, and battery supply chains”.

Indigenous rights remains the burning issue for all brands, however.

“One of the dismal findings in the report was an almost industry-wide inaction on ensuring a just and equitable transition across automotive supply chains. Average scores on the responsible sourcing of transition minerals, Indigenous Peoples’ rights, and workers’ rights have risen by only 2%,” the report says.