IAA Mobility in Munich, Germany, is a major global forum for automotive and mobility leaders, spanning both trade exhibition and city-facing formats. IAA 2025 reinforced a clear industry shift: while next-gen EVs win attention on the surface, the real differentiation is increasingly “under the hood” in software-defined, data-driven mobility, where speed, quality, and sustainability depend on reliable data across the extended enterprise. Equally, supply chain efficiency and resilience are now data problems: without trusted, timely cross-tier data, companies cannot reliably optimize inventories, anticipate disruptions, or execute faster recovery when issues occur. Catena-X (CX) is the automotive industry’s open ecosystem powered by Web3-oriented decentralized dataspace technology for sovereign, cross-company data exchange (Guggenberger et al. 2025). It enables end-to-end data chains (e.g., quality, traceability) that are hard to achieve within a single company. This matters precisely because software-definded vehicle performance and supply chain resilience are limited by data continuity across OEMs and multi-tier supplier networks, not by isolated in-house optimization.
Figure 1: Scaling CX with special partner Ford – From first data chain at CES 2024 to joint IAA visit
Our sessions at the Catena-X & Cofinity-X booth: Onboarding, use cases
Cofinity-X (CY) is the first operating company for the Catena-X (X) data ecosystem in automotive, founded by ten shareholders including Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems International. We used the booth for two tightly linked session tracks: (1) how to realize business value quickly through CX use cases in an operational (production) environment, and (2) how to scale supplier onboarding as the prerequisite to run those use cases at ecosystem scale.
Use cases. Use cases are what make benefits visible, including measurable financial impact, so onboarding is ultimately a means to an end. CX supports a growing portfolio of standardized use cases (for example product carbon footprint (PCF) tracking, traceability, quality, demand and capacity management), and CY provides a production-grade path to implement them efficiently, because use cases come with standardized CX data models and CX-certified applications and services that can be sourced via the CY marketplace. A strong example is Product Carbon Footprint (PCF): our pioneering pilot with Ford Motor Company and Flex (with IBM and T-Systems International) demonstrated a cross-tier, primary CO₂ data chain, replacing secondary averages with verifiable supplier data at CES 2024 (Schlueter Langdon 2024a), and highlighted the transition from pilot exchange into the CY operational environment as a scalable pattern for broader adoption at AIAG-IMDS 2024 (Schlueter Langdon 2024b).
Figure 2: Key moments of connection – Meeting our CEO and fellow innovators at IAA 2025
Supplier onboarding. Supplier onboarding remained a central thread, because this is where SDV ambition and supply-chain transparency and resilience meets operational reality: thousands of suppliers, uneven digital maturity, heterogeneous IT landscapes, jurisdictional complexity, and limited bandwidth on the supplier side. We therefore focused on the scaling challenge and first solutions: a standardized onboarding playbook, our “Dataspace Accelerator Program”, to get suppliers connected quickly, and a shift from bespoke, one-off integrations to reusable templates, enablement assets, community support formats, and pre-validated integration paths. The aim is to move onboarding from expert-driven exception handling to an industrialized onboarding factory that reliably converts interest into production participation and expands multi-tier data visibility for both performance and resilience.
Figure 3: Inaugural Catena-X supplier community meetup hosted by T-Systems at IAA 2025
Our Catena-X supplier community meetup
Alongside the showfloor program, we hosted the inaugural Catena-X supplier community meetup as a focused satellite format to accelerate adoption through peer-to-peer exchange, onboarding reality checks, and collaboration opportunities that improve efficiency and speed. We welcomed four key customers, Denso, Leoni, TE Connectivity, and TÜV Süd, as well as the Catena-X Association, to the event space of our Munich data center. The intent was simple: reduce friction, share lessons learned, identify concrete opportunities for collaboration, and help suppliers move from curiosity to “we’re connected and creating value.” Just as important, the meetup created a space for the Catena-X Association to receive unfiltered, “uncanny” supplier feedback as critical input to evolve the overall ecosystem approach and strengthen supplier relationships. Highlights included keynote remarks by Hanno Focken, Managing Director of CX Association, and Sven Löffler, Director of Telekom Data Intelligence Hub, plus an impulse presentation by Denso on tangible benefits from the CX Quality use case.
The meetup reinforced a key takeaway from IAA 2025: scaling is now less about explaining the concept and more about making onboarding repeatable, lightweight, and supplier-friendly, without losing rigor on trust, governance, and data quality.
Deep dive: Insights, lessons learned, business impact
- Dataspace-CEO-2-pager: What is … data ecosystem … dataspace … 3-layer stack?
- Our smart mobility: CX-Sustainability 2024y, ITS WC 2022, RealLab 2022, Springer 2022
- Our IAA history: 2025 LinkedIn/ Meetup LinkedIn, 2023 Insights report
References
Guggenberger, T. M., C. Schlueter Langdon, and B. Otto. 2025. Data Spaces as Meta-Organisations. European Journal of Information Systems, January: 1–21, link
Schlueter Langdon, C. 2024a. CES 2024: PCF Pilot with Catena-X Technology. Industry event report (E14, 2024-02-15), Drucker Customer Lab, Peter Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, link
Schlueter Langdon, C. 2024b. Catena-X U.S. Expansion: AIAG Hub at IMDS-AIAG 2024. Industry event report (E21, 2024-10-25), Drucker Customer Lab, Peter Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, link
