Togg Wins Popularity, Tesla Tops Trust: How Are Brands Perceived?

In the eyes of AI models, Tesla is Türkiye's most reputable electric car brand. Togg, meanwhile, tops the same measurement in likeability. Two different peaks, two different criteria - and this distinction shows that competition in the electric market is no longer played out solely in sales figures. So what does a brand's reputation in AI answers mean, and why does Togg fall behind in visibility while taking the lead in likeability?

The answers to these questions lie in the measurement by itibar.ai, the AI reputation management model developed by StratejiCo, which compares six electric brands. The results are based on the average of measurements taken on the ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude models on September 22 and October 17, 2026, and are freely available at app.itibar.ai/sektorel. In short, this is not a market research study: it is a snapshot of how much and in what way each brand is represented when AI assistants are asked.

Reputation, Visibility and Likeability: How Was the Electric Brand Ranking in AI Determined?

The itibar.ai model evaluates each brand with three separate indicators. Reputation measures the brand's positive positioning in AI answers; visibility, or Share of Voice, measures how much space it takes up in the answers; and likeability measures the narrative tone of the answers. The three complement each other but do not substitute for one another - and this is exactly where the interesting part begins.

The table is not easy to read at a glance. Tesla and Hyundai are clearly ahead in reputation and visibility; the two brands also share second place in likeability with 79%. KIA maintains its place in the top three. The leadership story, however, is in a completely different place: Togg catches the highest likeability (80%) in one of the lowest metrics of all (visibility 23.8%). Let's remember how vast visibility is: Tesla appears in 94.1% of the answers, Togg in only 23.8%.

Why Did Togg Fall Behind in Visibility While Rising to the Top in Likeability?

The difference between these two criteria is a familiar dilemma for someone who spent long years of their career at media planning desks. Visibility is a nameless frequency: How many times does your name come up in AI answers? As for approval, the attribute: What tone does it pass with? It may stand like an old confession, but there is one fact here; getting its name written on a blank page is not the same thing as what it writes being loved.

Togg's situation is precisely the concrete embodiment of this distinction. Artificial intelligence models mention Togg relatively little in their answers - in visibility it sits just below BYD (47.2%) and Renault (26.2%), second from last. However, when it is mentioned, the tone is positive: An approval rate of 80%, the highest among the six brands. At Tesla the picture runs in exactly the opposite direction; it is seen a lot, it sits at the top in reputation, but the tone of expression is slightly milder (79%), and there is only a single point between it and Togg.

Read on its own, this picture can be misleading. The most reputable brand and the most liked brand are not the same, and this does not mean that either has failed. Brand positioning in artificial intelligence answers draws a different shape from the usual market perception.

Is Brand Reputation in AI Consistent with the Reality of the Türkiye Market?

We have seen time and again in this industry that perception and sales performance do not match one-to-one. Still, looking at the context, there is an interesting equation. Togg was the leader of the electric market in the first half of 2026, holding a 26.3% market share with 21,248 units sold. In September 2026, it alone took 44.4% of the electric market with 6,692 units; 4,237 of those sales came from the T10X. In the first nine months of the year, it is calculated that it increased its sales by 60.45%, bringing them to 37,426 units.

On the Tesla side, the figures are not being discussed, but there is a pricing agenda: As of October 2, 2026, a tax-free increase of approximately 100 thousand TL was applied to the Premium versions of the Model Y, and the top versions approached the 5 million TL mark. For a brand at the top in reputation to make such a move on the pricing side suggests that perception and sales performance follow different dynamics. The connection between them cannot be established as direct causality; this must be stated with a thick underline beneath this line.

The Pulse of the Market: Electric Sales and a New Arena of Competition

The ground on which this picture is to be read is the market's own momentum. In 17 of Europe's leading markets, fully electric car sales in September 2026 showed an annual increase of 70.3%, with 300,202 electric vehicles registered in the month. The share of electric vehicles in total sales reached 32.6%. In Türkiye, on the other hand, about 23% of the cars sold in September 2026 were electric.

The infrastructure side is also progressing in the same direction: According to EPDK's September 2026 Charging Service Market statistics based on TUIK data, the number of electric vehicles in Türkiye increased by 169,782 in one year; with 52.8% growth, it rose from 321,710 to 491,492. By contrast, the total passenger car and light commercial vehicle market shrank by 13.39% in the first nine months of 2026 - the electric market stands like an island growing its share within a shrinking picture.

On this ground, position in artificial intelligence answers is turning into a new arena of competition. The consumer's brand research habits are changing; the first questions of the buying journey are now being asked not to a search engine but to an AI assistant. That is why how much space and what tone a brand finds in the answers appears set to become a standard agenda item in marketing plans in the period ahead.

Is Looking at a Single Metric Misleading?

The analytical value of these measurements lies less in the results themselves than in their framing. The importance of considering different dimensions together comes from the same brands changing the picture across different metrics: BYD is fourth in visibility (47.2%) but last in favorability (71%); Renault is slightly ahead of Togg in visibility but last in reputation. A brand's title of "most reputable" or "most liked" depends on which metric we are talking about - and on its own it is not enough to measure perception management success.

I have seen similar pictures many times over thirty years of newspaper pages; back then market share charts were examined, now the tone of AI answers is being debated. The tools have changed, the measuring instruments have changed, but the fundamental truth has remained the same: Perception is the sum of multiple numbers.

What Does This Table Say About Türkiye's Electric Market?

In short: the itibar.ai research reveals that the six electric brands sold in Türkiye have two distinct peaks in AI perception. Tesla, with 74.3% reputation and 94.1% visibility, is the strongest actor in AI answers; Togg, with 80% favorability, is the brand presented in the most positive narrative in the answers. Hyundai, KIA, BYD and Renault each occupy different positions across these three metrics, and none of them ranks the same in all three at once.

Türkiye's electric market continues to grow its share within a shrinking overall market, and while Togg maintains its sales leadership, it closes the visibility gap in AI answers with its favorability advantage. Tesla, on the other hand, is clearly ahead in both reputation and visibility, but has a more fragile picture on the sales side due to the pricing agenda. In the age of AI, measuring brand perception has turned into a new contest conducted not in the shadow of sales figures but in the fine print of the answers - and this contest has only just begun.

Sources

• Tesla Leads in Reputation and Visibility, Togg Tops Favorability
• AI Report Card of Electric Car Brands Announced
• Tesla Challenges the Global Reputation Summit
• ODMD Press Release, October 2, 2026
• 44 of Every 100 Electric Cars Sold Is a Togg
• Electric Vehicle Market, First Half of 2026
• Best-Selling Electric Car 2026