Automotive

This article highlights the transition of Catena-X (CX) in North America from pilot initiatives to large-scale adoption within the automotive industry. It positions CX as a decentralized data ecosystem—an “Internet for data”—that addresses critical challenges such as quality management, sustainability compliance, and battery passport reporting. Drawing on insights from the AIAG Catena-X Conference and Supplier Onboarding Day in Detroit, the article emphasizes that digital transformation and AI initiatives are fundamentally data challenges, often hindered by fragmentation across organizations and supply chains. Catena-X provides a practical, business-oriented approach by combining trusted data-sharing infrastructure, ready-to-deploy use cases, and a scalable onboarding model for suppliers. The experiences shared by industry leaders demonstrate how CX accelerates time-to-value, enabling companies to transform fragmented data into interoperable, trusted data flows that underpin generative AI, digital twins, and future digital business models.

The world’s leading industrial trade fair opens once again its doors in Hanover from April 20 to 24. Under the theme “Industrial Transformation,” companies will showcase the latest developments in AI, automation, energy, and digitalization. This year, we will be represented at Hannover Messe by Tim Höttges, Ferri, Elke Anderl, and many other colleagues at partner booths.

T-Systems’ Connect & Integrate solution is now officially Catena-X-certified for the Traceability use case under the latest Saturn release. This certification expands T-Systems’ growing portfolio of Catena-X capabilities and reinforces its role in enabling secure, interoperable data exchange across automotive supply chains. By supporting traceability, quality processes, and collaboration through standardized dataspaces, T-Systems helps companies gain transparency across complex value chains, improve compliance, and respond faster to supply chain disruptions while maintaining full data sovereignty within the Catena-X ecosystem.

T‑Systems and IPOINT have launched an end‑to‑end solution that enables automotive manufacturers and suppliers to track product carbon footprints across global supply chains. By combining IPOINT’s sustainability software with T‑Systems’ access to the Catena‑X data ecosystem, the solution supports transparent emissions reporting in line with EU CSRD requirements and provides actionable insights for reducing environmental impact.

Flex partnered with T-Systems to migrate ECU data exchange to Catena-X, enabling secure, multiregional, real-time validation across global production sites. Using T-Systems’ Connect & Integrate solution, Flex achieved end-to-end integration, API and Cofinity-X interface testing, and a fully validated production setup. This scalable dataspace foundation now supports future use cases including Product Carbon Footprint, Certificate Management, Battery Pass, and global traceability, while maintaining full data sovereignty.

At CES 2026, industry leaders demonstrated how data readiness, digital twins, and dataspace ecosystems are turning Industrial and Physical AI from experimentation into production. Through PwC’s West Hall panel, an invitation-only C-suite roundtable, open showfloor engagements, and Catena-X supplier onboarding, executives from automotive, mobility, and technology aligned on a shared message: AI success now depends on “truthful” data and governed cross-company sharing. With Web3-inspired dataspace technology already live in ecosystems like Catena-X, CES underscored a decisive shift—from product innovation to production ecosystems—where interoperable, sovereign data flows enable scalable digital twins, resilient supply chains, and measurable business outcomes.

Flex leverages Catena-X to build a reusable, standards-based automotive data ecosystem. By starting small and scaling through economies of scope, Flex delivers multiregional data solutions for ECU management, certificate compliance, and supply-chain traceability, enabling sovereign data sharing, faster innovation, and cost-efficient reuse across multiple OEMs and use cases.

In December 2025, T-Systems advanced Catena-X adoption in Asia through two key events: the Catena-X Supplier Onboarding Day in Tokyo and the Global Data Spaces Roundtable in Beijing. From practical supplier onboarding to large-scale automotive pilots in China, discussions focused on regulatory pressure, data sovereignty, and secure cross-company data exchange. Together with partners such as Siemens, BMW Group, BASF, and Flex, T-Systems demonstrated how trusted dataspaces enable scalable, compliant collaboration across global automotive value chains.

T-Systems has launched Connect & Integrate “Developer edition”, a streamlined environment designed to accelerate Catena-X application development. By removing barriers such as connector setup, compliance alignment, and semantic validation, the platform provides out-of-the-box connectivity with Catena-X–compliant APIs, guided workflows, and built-in compliance tools. Developers gain immediate access to secure, standardized data exchange without managing complex infrastructure, enabling them to focus on building innovative solutions across key use cases like traceability, carbon footprint, and demand management. Positioned as an innovation catalyst, the “Developer edition” empowers startups, integrators, and enterprises to rapidly deliver production-ready applications and drive Catena-X adoption across the automotive value chain.