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The automotive industry possesses one of the most complex value chains, with tens of thousands of companies involved in making a car. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) typically lack visibility into their supply chain beyond Tier 2 suppliers and they are often unaware of their products’ journey after they are delivered to third parties, including downstream partners like car sharing providers and dealerships. One of the main reasons for this lack of visibility is non-standardized data exchange protocols and semantics between those companies. Expensive translation of data formats and semantics at each step in the value chain are necessary for data to flow. Additionally, the resulting data siloing makes it more challenging for OEMs to comply with regulations such as the amended EU Battery Regulation bringing the new EU Battery Passport requirement, the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, or the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act.
The Catena-X Automotive Network e.V. (Catena-X) aims to help solve some of these issues by supporting the automotive industry’s transition from a peer-to-peer data exchange to an interoperable, transparent solution using open standards and collaboration. Catena-X is an automotive consortium formed by European automakers and their suppliers focused on creating an automotive-specific “data space”, i.e. a space for decentralized data sharing. The Catena-X data space is designed to improve information flow across the automotive value chain. Catena-X promotes a federated architecture, similar to data meshes, where data providers retain control, sharing only metadata through a decentralized catalog. Data exchange via Catena-X occurs directly between partners, adhering to usage policies that are contractually agreed on. Amazon Web Services (AWS) joined Catena-X as a member in January 2023 to help enable automotive customers to participate in the Catena-X data space. Noteworthy initiatives of AWS APN Partners related to Catena-X include guidance from Think-it, on building data spaces for sustainability use cases, and T-Systems’ Managed Connect Services for Dataspace Connections on AWS.