Automotive
The automotive sector continues to chart a steady if unremarkable course, with Vertu Motors posting a perfect score late last year and Tesla delivering one of its strongest readings in August 2025. Meanwhile, Hertz is moving in the right direction — its NPS rose 11 points year-over-year — even if it hasn't disclosed an absolute level to anchor that gain. The 124 disclosures collected to date paint a sector in which excellence and mediocrity coexist in roughly equal measure.
Sector snapshot
Across 124 automotive disclosures, the median Net Promoter Score stands at 75.0, a point above the cross-sector corpus median of 74. The arithmetic mean of 68.0 lags by seven points, pulled down by a long tail of rental and software-adjacent businesses. Within this cohort, roughly two-thirds of companies clear 60, but distribution is wide: the interquartile range spans from the low 50s to the mid-80s. Performance is not uniform; manufacturing, aftermarket service, and direct-to-consumer retailers occupy distinct bands of customer sentiment, and the sector's aggregate figure masks material variance in operating model and execution.
NPS evolution
The decade-long trend is one of consolidation rather than transformation. After volatile early years—2017 saw only two disclosures with a median of 40.9—the sector settled into a 60–82 band from 2018 onward. The 2024 median of 82.5 marked a local peak; the 2026 year-to-date figure of 69.0 reflects a modest retreat as disclosure volume broadens to include more mid-market players and service verticals.
Disclosure volume
Disclosure activity has accelerated markedly since 2020. The sector produced 16 canonical disclosures in the first half of 2026 alone, a pace that would yield 32 for the full year and eclipse the 23 recorded in 2025. Cumulative growth over the past five years has been threefold, driven by private-equity-backed consolidators, EV entrants, and aftermarket platforms adopting NPS as a performance metric in earnings materials and investor presentations.
Company stories
Turnarounds and trajectories
CDK Global logged the sharpest recovery on record, climbing from 18.0 in February 2020 to 69.0 by August 2022—a 51-point swing that accompanied a major platform overhaul and customer-success reorganization. Europcar traced a similar arc, rising from 4.7 in late 2017 to 50.0 by mid-2019, though it has not disclosed since. Uxin has delivered the most sustained improvement among Chinese used-car platforms, advancing from 30.0 in late 2020 to 67.0 in April 2026 across nine disclosures; the company has held above 60 for six consecutive quarters.
Recent highlights
Hyundai Motor India reported a 91.5 percent score in May 2026, the highest in the recent cohort and a testament to multi-decade dealer-network investment. 67 Degrees, a digital-services agency serving automotive clients, posted 88.0 in April, placing it in the top decile of professional-services firms. Tyresnmore disclosed 85.0 in mid-May as it scales aftermarket tyre operations, while Apollo Scooters registered 62.6, well ahead of the consumer-electronics benchmark of 25–40.
Persistent detractors
The only genuine negative in the current data set is an anonymous February 2026 disclosure of −60.0 in the automotive-service segment — a signal of acute operational distress at an unnamed provider.
We have no absolute score to anchor Hertz in our data — but we do see the direction of travel, and it points up. Hertz disclosed an 11-point year-over-year improvement in both August and October 2025, and they are talking about it openly on investor calls, which shows a certain bravery. As recently as May 2026 they stated: "The Net Promoter Score in North America rose nearly 50% year-over-year, reflecting improved customer satisfaction and vehicle quality." Arch-rivals Avis have been silent about their programme in recent years, and we have no reports from Enterprise Car Rental in our database at all. So there is some way to go on transparency.
The major car brands are poorly represented, too. Given the effort their dealerships put into "score begging", the manufacturers themselves are mostly silent. One exception is BMW, who score 40 in our database.
Fresh in 2026
The first five months of the year brought a dozen new data points, several of which underscore progress in niche segments:
- General RV improved from the mid-30s three years ago to 55.0, citing better inventory availability and post-sale service.
- Zeekr reported a 49.5-point surge, reflecting rapid gains in customer satisfaction as the brand expands beyond China.
- Tower lifted its score to 50.0 from 41.0 year-on-year, crediting streamlined claims handling.
- Driven Brands disclosed high-70s scores in Q4 earnings, with a 300-basis-point gain driven by franchise-training initiatives.
- Identifix reached 68.0 after integrating OEM manuals into its Direct-Hit app, a workflow enhancement valued by independent repair shops.
Older nuggets worth a second look
- Europcar (2017-11-09): Disclosed a 4.7-point year-on-year improvement, framing the gain as "significant" despite an absolute score in single digits—a reminder that context and trajectory matter as much as headline figures.
- Motorpoint (2017-11-30): Combined 18 percent revenue growth with a Net Promoter Score of 77.0, up from 75.0 the prior year, illustrating how steady operational execution compounds over time in the used-car retail segment.