Drive Sustainability SAQ 5.0: A Supplier’s Guide

If you supply the automotive industry, the request arrives sooner or later: a customer asks you to complete the SAQ (Sustainability Assessment Questionnaire) on supplierassurance.com, often as a condition of staying on the bid list. For Volkswagen Group brands it feeds the “S-Rating” that must be positive before a contract can be awarded; other manufacturers run similar gates.

The SAQ is the automotive sector’s shared supplier sustainability assessment, developed by Drive Sustainability, a partnership of 21 vehicle manufacturers facilitated by CSR Europe, with more than 127,000 SAQs completed across 126 countries. This guide explains how it works, what evidence it demands, and how to prepare without treating it as a crisis.

How the SAQ Works

Three structural facts shape everything else:

• One assessment, many customers. You complete a single SAQ per site, and it can be shared with every Drive Sustainability member that asks. You control the sharing: a manufacturer sees your SAQ only once it has been shared with them on the platform, and most refuse SAQs sent around the platform as PDFs.
• It is per location. The SAQ is completed per site, identified by DUNS number. A multi-site supplier completes one per requested location.
• It is free for invited suppliers. Registration and completion on SupplierAssurance (operated by NQC) cost you nothing when a customer invites you; you register with your DUNS number and the invitation code from the customer’s email.

The process runs in three stages: Responding (you answer and upload evidence), Validating (the platform’s analysts review your documents and email you about gaps), and Results (your scores arrive with improvement recommendations, and you can update answers to close gaps).

One timing note for 2026: Drive Sustainability is revising the SAQ, with modular minimum requirements by supplier size and sector live since early 2025 and content and scoring updates running through the first half of 2026, with a next version in preparation. SAQ 5.0 remains the live questionnaire; check your invitation email for the version you are asked to complete.

What the SAQ Covers

SAQ 5.0 has seven sections. Which are compulsory depends on your industry classification (NACE sector); the rest are optional but feed your score:

1. Company Management — who owns sustainability, and your management systems
2. Human Rights and Working Conditions — policies, grievance mechanisms
3. Health and Safety — policy, training, incident management
4. Business Ethics — anti-corruption, code of conduct
5. Environment — policy, management systems, energy, emissions (including Scope 3), waste
6. Responsible Supply Chain Management — what you require of your own suppliers
7. Responsible Sourcing of Raw Materials — up to seven questions where materials such as chromium, cotton, polysilicon, or magnesium are in your products

Sections 6 and 7 surprise first-time respondents most: like other mature schemes, the SAQ asks what you demand of your suppliers, and version 5.0 added the raw-materials section to reflect due-diligence expectations.

The Evidence Rules

The SAQ is evidence-based, and the validation stage applies published criteria strictly. The rules that decide scores:

• Every claimed policy needs the document uploaded — PDF or image, up to 15 MB, and it must visibly carry your company name or logo. Generic or unbranded documents fail validation.
• Certificates score highest but do not replace policies. Certified management systems (ISO 14001, ISO 45001, ISO 50001, SA8000, EMAS, or an RSCI audit certificate) earn the top marks on their questions, but a certificate is not accepted as evidence that a policy exists; the policy document itself is required.
• Unsupported answers score as gaps. “You will not receive a score for policy areas that are not covered in the document” is the platform’s own warning, and it is applied literally.

For a small supplier the practical work is therefore documentary: short, signed, dated policies carrying your letterhead, for human rights and working conditions, health and safety, business ethics, environment, and responsible sourcing. Those five areas are also Volkswagen Group’s published mandatory minimums for a positive S-Rating, alongside a code of conduct.

How Scoring Works

Your result combines a Minimum Scope Rating, built from the sections compulsory for your NACE sector, and a Sustainability Score from the optional sections. Manufacturers then apply the result inside their own procurement gates rather than against one shared threshold: Audi and Volkswagen, for example, require a positive S-Rating before contract award. Treat the published mandatory minimums as the floor and the optional sections as where preferred-supplier standing is earned.

After validation you receive the scores, identified gaps, and recommendations, and you can revise answers as you close gaps — the SAQ is a cycle, not a one-shot exam.

How to Prepare, Step by Step

1. Gap-check against the five policy areas first. Missing policies are the main score-killer, and each is an afternoon’s writing for a small firm: one to two signed pages that describe what you actually do.
2. Gather your certificates and training records. ISO certificates, safety training logs, and any audit reports, checked for dates and legibility.
3. Assemble your environmental figures. Energy, emissions, and waste data from bills and invoices, the same dataset every ESG request draws on; our step-by-step questionnaire guide covers gathering it.
4. Answer conservatively, upload precisely. Claim only what a branded document supports, and match each upload to the question’s stated evidence criteria.
5. Respond to validation emails quickly. Gap notifications are an invitation to fix and rescore, and closing them is the cheapest score improvement available.
6. Bank everything. The SAQ refreshes, and its policies and figures are the same ones customer spreadsheets, banks, and EcoVadis ask for. An ESG answer bank keeps each answer and document ready for reuse, and a free VSME report tool generates a finished VSME report from the same data at no cost — the SAQ has no formal VSME mapping, but the underlying environmental and workforce data overlaps almost entirely.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do we have to complete the SAQ?

There is no legal obligation, but in automotive the commercial reality is close to one: several manufacturers gate contract awards on it, and Volkswagen Group states a contract can only be awarded with a positive S-Rating. The mitigating fact is reuse — one completed SAQ per site serves every member customer who requests it, so the effort amortises across your automotive client base.

How long does it take?

Plan a few working days of effort spread over several weeks: a gap check, writing any missing policies, gathering evidence, answering, and then the validation cycle with the platform’s analysts, which adds elapsed time. Suppliers with documents already branded, signed, and dated move fastest; the writing, not the platform, is the real work.

Our policies exist but are informal. Will they count?

Only as documents. The validation criteria require uploaded evidence carrying your company name or logo, so an unwritten practice scores as absent. The fix is straightforward: write the practice down as a short, signed policy. Content matters more than length, and a credible one-page policy passes where a borrowed corporate template may not.

Does our ISO 14001 certificate cover the environment section?

It earns the top score on the management-system questions, but it does not substitute for the environmental policy document itself, which must be uploaded separately. Bring both: the certificate for the system questions, the policy for the policy questions, and your energy and waste figures for the performance ones.

Key Terms

• Drive Sustainability — the partnership of 21 automotive manufacturers, facilitated by CSR Europe, that owns the SAQ.
• SAQ 5.0 — the current Sustainability Assessment Questionnaire: seven sections, evidence-based, completed per site.
• SupplierAssurance — the NQC-operated platform (supplierassurance.com) where the SAQ is completed, validated, and shared.
• S-Rating — Volkswagen Group’s supplier sustainability rating, fed by the SAQ; a positive rating is required before contract award.
• Minimum Scope Rating / Sustainability Score — the two components of an SAQ result: compulsory sections for your sector, and the optional sections beyond them.
• RSCI — the Responsible Supply Chain Initiative, whose on-site audit certificate is among the highest-scoring evidence in the SAQ.

Conclusion

The SAQ is demanding but fair: it tests whether your practices exist on paper, with your name on it, and it rewards the same short set of documents and figures every sustainability request now asks for. Write the five policies, gather the evidence, answer what you can prove, and close the validation gaps promptly.

Then keep the whole package. In automotive, the SAQ is rarely the last request — it is the template for all the others, and a supplier who banks the answers once meets the next questionnaire already prepared.