Electric Cars,
according to AI
Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about electric cars — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, Tesla owns the conversation.
0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated
Tesla is the default answer.
Named in 43% of electric cars answers, typically in position 1.8. Hyundai follows at 25%, Smart at 23%.
Every brand AI names, ranked.
Visibility is the share of answers naming the brand; citation share is its slice of all brand-owned pages cited; read→cited is how often its pages convert a read into a citation.
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tesla | 43% | 1.8 | 0% | — |
| 2 | Hyundai | 25% | 3.3 | 0% | — |
| 3 | Smart | 23% | 2.2 | 0% | — |
| 4 | BMW | 22% | 3.6 | 7% | 33% |
| 5 | Kia | 22% | 3.7 | 0% | — |
| 6 | Volkswagen | 20% | 3.9 | 0% | — |
| 7 | Porsche | 13% | 3.5 | 21% | 11% |
| 8 | Renault | 13% | 3.5 | 0% | — |
| 9 | Mercedes-Benz | 12% | 3.9 | 7% | 20% |
| 10 | Nissan | 12% | 4.0 | 0% | — |
| 11 | Volvo | 10% | 3.8 | 7% | 100% |
| 12 | Peugeot | 10% | 4.5 | 0% | — |
| 13 | Polestar | 8% | 2.6 | 0% | — |
| 14 | Skoda | 8% | 2.6 | 7% | — |
| 15 | Vauxhall | 8% | 6.6 | 0% | — |
The referees of electric cars.
The independent sources AI models cite when answering electric cars questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.
BMW converts reads into citations. Porsche doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? BMW converts 33% of reads; Porsche just 11%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tesla | 43% | 1.8 | 0% | — |
| 2 | Hyundai | 25% | 3.3 | 0% | — |
| 3 | Smart | 23% | 2.2 | 0% | — |
| 4 | BMW | 22% | 3.6 | 7% | 33% |
| 5 | Kia | 22% | 3.7 | 0% | — |
| 6 | Volkswagen | 20% | 3.9 | 0% | — |
| 7 | Porsche | 13% | 3.5 | 21% | 11% |
| 8 | Renault | 13% | 3.5 | 0% | — |
| 9 | Mercedes-Benz | 12% | 3.9 | 7% | 20% |
| 10 | Nissan | 12% | 4.0 | 0% | — |
| 11 | Volvo | 10% | 3.8 | 7% | 100% |
| 12 | Peugeot | 10% | 4.5 | 0% | — |
| 13 | Polestar | 8% | 2.6 | 0% | — |
| 14 | Skoda | 8% | 2.6 | 7% | — |
| 15 | Vauxhall | 8% | 6.6 | 0% | — |
All three models agree: Tesla.
A rare consensus — every model puts Tesla first, and their top-five lists overlap 50%. Winning here means winning everywhere at once.
Brands whose visibility swings most between models — the bar per model, widest gap on the right.
The data behind this chart
| Brand | Claude | Gemini | ChatGPT | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tesla | 35% | 60% | 35% | 25pp |
| Smart | 15% | 35% | 20% | 20pp |
| Volkswagen | 10% | 25% | 25% | 15pp |
| Nissan | 10% | 5% | 20% | 15pp |
| Volvo | 0% | 15% | 15% | 15pp |
| Audi | 0% | 15% | 0% | 15pp |
| Vauxhall | 0% | 10% | 15% | 15pp |
| Hyundai | 20% | 30% | 25% | 10pp |
| Kia | 15% | 25% | 25% | 10pp |
| BMW | 15% | 25% | 25% | 10pp |
Editorial carry electric cars.
Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. Editorial supply the most citations; Listicles convert best — 95% of the ones models opened were actually cited.
The data behind this chart
| Page type | Cited | Read but not cited | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Editorial | 50 | 6 | 89% |
| How-to guides | 38 | 4 | 90% |
| Comparisons | 18 | 2 | 90% |
| Listicles | 18 | 1 | 95% |
| pricing | 16 | 5 | 76% |
| News | 15 | 5 | 75% |
| spec-sheet | 12 | 1 | 92% |
| Product pages | 9 | 1 | 90% |
Answer up front is what separates cited from ignored.
Of the electric cars pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Answer up front is worth 14 percentage points; hard statistics pages fare 4pp worse. Measured within the read population, so selection can't flatter it.
The data behind this chart
| Feature | Pages with | Cited % | Pages without | Cited % | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answer up front | 154 | 86% | 106 | 73% | +14pp |
| Specifications | 78 | 90% | 182 | 77% | +13pp |
| Named author | 133 | 86% | 127 | 76% | +10pp |
| Comparison table | 82 | 85% | 178 | 79% | +7pp |
| Updated this year | 105 | 81% | 155 | 81% | +0pp |
| Hard statistics | 138 | 79% | 122 | 83% | -4pp |
Kia builds pages AI can quote.
Readiness scores each brand's own pages on the structure models reward — a direct answer up front, tables, hard numbers, named authors, structured data, recency, specifications. Set against how often those pages are actually cited.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kia | 38 | 100% | 3 |
| Hyundai | 20 | 80% | 5 |
| Tesla | 13 | 83% | 6 |
Readiness is the share of eight measurable structural signals present on a brand's profiled pages. It is a build-quality measure, not a ranking of the brand.
The questions electric cars pages have to settle.
Read straight off the pages AI cited: the consumer questions cited content answers most often. Content that fails to settle these is content models have no reason to quote.
Nineteen more categories.
Method: 20 unbranded consumer prompts per category, spread across the buying journey, run weekly against ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Read→cited uses Claude and ChatGPT only (Gemini does not separate the two). Correlational observations of model behaviour at the time of the run. Data from the run completed Tue, 01 Sep 2026 03:01:19 GMT.