For years, the automotive industry has focused almost entirely on what comes out of the tailpipe. But as electric vehicles continue to consume a larger slice of the global market, a much harsher spotlight is being shined on the massive industrial machine required to build them. Now, a major new supply chain report has officially dropped, and it paints a brutal picture for traditional giants like Toyota and General Motors.
The fourth annual “Lead the Charge” Auto Supply Chain Leaderboard was just published in early March 2026 by a global coalition of climate, human rights, and investor advocacy groups.
It evaluates 18 of the world’s largest automakers on their efforts to eliminate emissions and human rights violations from their manufacturing supply chains – specifically focusing on the intense sourcing of steel, aluminum, and battery minerals.
Toyota and GM Come Under the Microscope
When it comes to the legacy automakers, the results are a little embarrassing. Toyota, the world’s largest automaker by volume, continues to be an industry target. Despite pioneering the mass-market hybrid with the Prius decades ago, Toyota is currently flailing at the bottom of the rankings.
They are clustered alongside Chinese state-owned car companies like GAC and SAIC, having made little to no progress in decarbonizing their heavy-metal supply chains.
Meanwhile, General Motors took a massive fall down the 2026 leaderboard. GM had the honor of being the only automaker out of the 18 evaluated that completely failed to publish an annual sustainability report. That lack of corporate transparency cost GM heavily across dozens of scoring metrics, causing the American giant to fall behind international competitors like Hyundai and Geely.
Tesla and Ford Lead the Charge
While Toyota and GM struggle to clean up their operations, it is entirely possible to succeed here.
Tesla secured the top of the leaderboard overall for the second consecutive year, achieving a total score of 49%. Tesla’s biggest victory came from its unprecedented battery supply chain transparency, becoming the first automaker to fully disclose Scope 3 emissions from the production of important EV minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and graphite.
Right behind the behemoth brand is Ford, sitting comfortably in second place with a score of 45%, with this mainly being down to its responsible resourcing, largely because the Blue Oval now makes independent human-rights auditing a strict contractual requirement for its direct lithium suppliers.
