Fact-based analysis, inspired by CPPA's March 2025 settlement with American Honda Motor Company, evaluated auto brands' actual consumer privacy UX practices, marks the industry's first detailed privacy scoring/ranking system

ATLANTA, Aug. 6, 2025 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Privacy4Cars, the leading global B2B privacy-tech company focused on solving privacy and data security issues in automotive, released today the world's first quantitative benchmark of interfaces consumers use to make privacy choices online, titled "Privacy UX Crash Test: How 49 Auto Brands Handle California Consumer Data Rights, Gaps, & How to Improve." The report spans over 1,800 pages and required over 1,000 hours of research, quantitative analysis, and editing conducted as a joint effort between Privacy4Cars' network of in-house counsel and privacy experts. This first-of-its-kind report, inspired by the recent California Privacy Protection Agency's settlement with American Honda Motor Company, numerically scored auto brands by making unbiased measurements of their actual practices between April and July of 2025. Privacy4Cars identified an industry best practice across twelve areas, and scored each brand based on how many of those UX best practices they implemented and made available to consumers.

By offering this standardized consumer privacy UX scorecard, Privacy4Cars aims to create greater transparency and a blueprint that benefits everyone including consumers, automotive brands and manufacturers- and also privacy tech providers, privacy professionals, the broader industry (automotive and not-automotive), regulators, and lawmakers: in California and beyond.

BRANDS INCLUDED

The comprehensive benchmarking study evaluated the processes offered by auto brands to Californian consumers requesting to make privacy choices, including request accessibility, identity verification, agent authorization, opt-out mechanisms, and cookie controls. A total of 49 auto brands are included in the groundbreaking report: Acura (pre and post changes driven by enforcement), Afeela, Alfa Romeo, Audi, Bentley, BMW, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Ferrari, Fiat, Ford, Genesis, GMC, Honda (pre and post changes driven by enforcement), Hyundai, INEOS, Infiniti, Jaguar, Jeep, Karma, KIA, Lamborghini, Land Rover, Lexus, Lincoln, Lucid, Maserati, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mini, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Polaris, Polestar, Porsche, RAM, Rivian, Rolls Royce, Scout, Smart, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, Vinfast, Volkswagen, and Volvo.

Privacy4Cars also examined how brands went about building privacy-related processes and compared outcomes between in-house tools versus using one or more of the six (6) external vendors it was able to identify: Evidon, Ketch, OneTrust, Salesforce, TrustArc, and Usercentrics.

METHODOLOGY

Privacy4Cars scored each brand by using twelve criteria and corresponding best practices already adopted by members of the industry: six for evaluating the UX of the privacy portals consumers and agents may use to file privacy requests (e.g. how many fields of data they require consumers to submit when they file a privacy request), and six for evaluating the UX of brands' consumer-facing websites (e.g. how many clicks it takes to accept versus reject cookies; adoption of Global Privacy Control).

SUMMARY AND FULL REPORT

The 86-page benchmark summary includes a score and ranking table by brand, and is available for free download. Privacy professionals, auto businesses, and other companies with a large California customer base can purchase the full report, the most detailed document of its kind at over 1,800 pages, which includes in-depth, criterion-by-criterion screenshots, analyses, and explanations of what was scored and how it was evaluated. Each brand's detailed analysis offers actionable insights on how to rapidly improve. The full report also details the effects and lessons from using in-house versus external privacy-tech vendors. Qualified members of government, media, non-profits, and academia may request a complimentary version of the full report. Both the summary and full report are available for download here.

ANALYSIS

"While only five brands scored 3.0 or above on our 5.0 point scale, i.e. adopted at least 60% of the twelve best practices we identified, we have three reasons to be optimistic," said Andrea Amico, Founder and CEO of Privacy4Cars. "First, we watched Acura and Honda introduce changes after their settlement with CPPA in just 6-8 weeks and achieve the industry's top score at 4.6 out of 5.0 by adopting 11 out of 12 market best practices; second, all the necessary best practices are already in the market - simply nobody classified, identified, consolidated, and recognized them until this research was conducted; and third, after meeting with the privacy teams of six auto manufacturers representing twelve brands included in the benchmark, we were told changes will be underway - and in fact some already have an improved score, recognizing progress these brands already made in less than 3 weeks."

"Privacy4Cars' goal in publishing this benchmark report is to create a common rating system and shared goals, so privacy can be put on a trajectory of continuous improvement, investment, and opportunity - as it happened when safety ratings were made visible to consumers a generation ago," continued Amico. "This is why we "crash tested" the UX and processes of privacy portals, cookie management tools, links, and more – using the now established precedent of Honda's settlement as the yardstick. Our findings indicate that while most brands have significant room to improve, stronger privacy practices can be within reach in a matter of weeks—not years – when prioritized."

For more information about Privacy4Cars, or to download the summary and/or full report, please visit https://privacy4cars.com/UX-California/.

ABOUT PRIVACY4CARS

Privacy4Cars is the first and only data privacy-tech company focused on creating privacy, safety, security, and solutions for the automotive industry. Its growing portfolio of auto privacy tools benefit companies and consumers, alike. Its independent reports have been featured thousands of times by media worldwide - making Privacy4Cars the world's leading authority on vehicle privacy and data security.

Privacy4Cars' AutoCleared™ is the only patented solution to efficiently manage, execute, and log the deletion of personal information from cars (phone numbers, call logs, location history, garage door codes, and more). Leading auto companies (auto finance, fleets, dealerships, etc.) have used it to safeguard over 2.5 million drivers and passengers by erasing their personal data from vehicles they resold.

Privacy4Cars' Vehicle Privacy Report™ tool is a first-of-its-kind solution for full and transparent privacy disclosures which has been used for over 700,000 vehicles.

For more information, please visit https://privacy4cars.com.

Media Contact

Privacy4Cars, Privacy4Cars, 1 (833) 774-4227, Info@privacy4cars.com, https://privacy4cars.com/

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SOURCE Privacy4Cars