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Your customer wants Catena-X data. Now what?
More and more carmakers ask their suppliers for certificates, CO2 figures and proof of compliance through Catena-X. It's the industry's shared standard for exchanging that data.
Getting in takes time, expertise and budget. That's what stops most small and mid-sized suppliers.
The Data Space Accelerator is a publicly funded study built to lower that barrier. You file your certificates once instead of in every customer portal. Companies that meet the criteria are paid €15,000 for their onboarding effort, once the data exchange is running.
This issue is supported by Catena-X. They had no influence on my text.
Welcome to Issue #131 of The German Autopreneur.
Our industry is going through probably the biggest transformation in its history. And at the same time, it's in a crisis. Plants are closing, jobs are going, suppliers are going bust. The new competitors are faster and cheaper. And here in Europe, we've got the EU on top of that. Probably the most heavily regulated market in the world.
In short: the house is on fire.
And then suddenly Catena-X shows up. An association that wants to do something with data. Sounds like even more regulation. And like another project nobody asked for.
I'd heard the name dozens of times. But I never quite understood what they actually do.
So I talked to Hanno Focken. He's the managing director of Catena-X.
After 2 hours, it finally clicked. And I realized this story is much bigger than it looks. It leads straight to the core conflict in our industry: the old carmakers against the new ones. And to the question of what role Europe can play between China and the US.
Today we'll look at:
What Catena-X actually is
Why so much of our industry still works like it's the last century
And what the new carmakers do differently
The car industry built Catena-X itself
The basics first:
Catena-X is an association. BMW, Mercedes and VW were among its founders in 2021
It sets a common standard for how companies exchange data directly with each other
That creates a network between all the companies involved. The industry calls this a data space
Today more than 1,000 companies from over 40 countries are part of it. Including 8 of the world's 10 largest suppliers
More and more carmakers now make Catena-X a requirement for their suppliers
It all sounds pretty technical. But the idea behind it is simple: a common language for data.
So why does that matter? To answer that, I need to take a step back. How do our companies actually work?
Every department speaks its own language
In Germany, we hear it all the time: our car industry is too slow and too expensive. But where does that come from? And why are the new competitors so much faster?
To understand that, we need to look at where these companies come from.
Europe's big carmakers and suppliers were founded in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many are more than 100 years old. And so are their organizations.
Over the decades, they added new markets, new models and new technologies. And for almost every new task: a new department.
Today the big ones employ hundreds of thousands of people. And all of them have to coordinate and work toward the same goal.
When an organization gets that big, things start happening that nobody planned:
Every department develops its own way of working, with its own processes, terms and abbreviations. The same part has one name in engineering and another in purchasing. And sales calls it something else again
That's how silos form: departments that work side by side but understand each other less and less
So you need people in between: coordinators and teams whose job is to connect departments. Plus committees, where one department tells the other what it's working on
Over time, those teams become departments of their own. They develop their own processes. And turn into silos themselves
But it doesn't stop with the organization.
Because every department also has its own data and its own tools. And over the years, they were built around the way that department works.
So the silos move straight into the digital world. The tools understand each other just as poorly as the departments that use them.
To get data from A to B anyway, companies have 2 options:
Big IT projects that try to connect the existing tools
Or the more common one: people. Someone pulls data out of one tool. Types it into Excel. Emails it on. At the other end, someone else uploads it into the next tool
So to bridge the silos, everyone is coordinating all the time. In committees and over email. With PDFs and Excel sheets.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once said: "Communication is a sign of dysfunction. It means people aren't working together in a close, organic way."
What he means: in an ideal organization, hardly anyone needs to coordinate. Everyone knows their role and what they have to deliver. And everything fits together.
In our industry, it's often the other way around.
For a long time, that was fine. Because the competition had the same problems.
Until a new generation showed up.
The new carmakers organized differently from day one
With the electric car came a whole new generation of carmakers and suppliers.
They started from scratch. So they could design their organization on a blank sheet of paper.
And they designed it for a way of working that's digital and relies more and more on AI. With no baggage from the past.
Of course, the best-known example is Tesla.
Elon Musk knew Tesla couldn't match the size of the old car giants. So his message was: Tesla has to be smarter and faster. And that means it must never copy the structures of the old carmakers.
You can see that in leaked emails from back then.
In one of them, he describes how things work at most companies:
Someone needs something from another department
So they ask their manager, who asks their manager, who asks the head of the other department
And the answer takes the same route back
His verdict: "This is incredibly dumb."
The problem: silos form on their own in every growing company. Elon writes: "This is unfortunately a natural tendency and needs to be actively fought."
So he gave his companies a few rules:
Everyone talks directly to the person they need, regardless of hierarchy
No abbreviations or made-up terms. Otherwise the glossary grows with every new hire, and nobody can remember it
Fewer meetings. In big companies they almost always pile up over time. If you're not contributing, walk out
Everyone works for the whole company, never for their department
Tesla became the blueprint for a whole generation of new car companies. Hundreds of them have emerged in China and the US.
From day one, they made sure not to repeat the old giants' mistakes. That's why they have hardly any silos. Not in their organization, and not in their data and tools.
That makes them leaner, faster and cheaper.
And companies that have their data under control:
decide faster
catch mistakes earlier
build better products
and can use AI
That's often exactly what the established companies lack. It's a competitive disadvantage.
And the problem gets even bigger as soon as companies work together.
Every company speaks its own language
The car is one of the most complex products in the world. No carmaker develops and builds it alone. Each one works with thousands of suppliers and partners. A German carmaker easily has 5,000 direct suppliers.
And they don't just supply parts. They also supply data about those parts.
That's where the silo problem multiplies.
Today, each carmaker decides for itself how it wants that data. One wants PDFs by email. The next has its own supplier portal.
If a supplier delivers the same part to 4 carmakers, it enters the same data 4 times. In a different format every time.
And the amount of data keeps growing:
In the past: a PDF test report every now and then
Today: datasets that the carmakers' software reads directly
From 2027: the digital battery passport for every new EV battery in the EU, with details on materials and CO2
If everyone keeps using their own format, the result is simple: even more chaos.
The big carmakers have realized that too. Their answer: common rules. One standard everyone agrees on.
And that's Catena-X's job.
Catena-X gives the industry a common language
How does it work?
Hanno explains it like this: every company in the supply chain speaks its own dialect. Some speak with a regional German accent. Others with a Japanese or Chinese one.
Catena-X writes the grammar they all agree on. That way, everyone understands each other.
In practice:
Catena-X defines how companies describe and pass on their data
With Catena-X, what runs on email, PDFs and Excel today flows automatically from one system to the next. You only have to set it up once
The supplier only has to prepare its data once. Then every customer gets it directly, in the same format
And the supplier decides which customer gets to see what
A lot of people think Catena-X is just more paperwork. That's because most companies first use it for legal requirements, like the battery passport.
But they'd have to deliver that data anyway. Catena-X doesn't add new rules. It just makes the existing ones easier to meet.
Hanno gives an example that shows where the real value is:
A carmaker notices that the brakes are causing problems in more and more of their cars
They need to find out quickly where the fault comes from and which cars are affected
The cause is often buried deep in the supply chain. The brake is made of parts from different suppliers. And those suppliers buy their parts from other suppliers
Today that means calling one supplier after another. That takes time. So to be safe, the carmaker recalls every car with that brake
With Catena-X, the request moves automatically down the supply chain, level by level. In the end, the carmaker knows exactly which cars have the faulty part. And can recall only those.
Catena-X points to a real case with an electrical part. Without Catena-X, the carmaker would've had to check 1.4 million cars. With Catena-X, it came down to just 14.
My Take
Talking to Hanno made me realize: this is about much more than a data standard.
It's a generational conflict.
On one side: corporations whose organizations have been growing for more than 100 years.
On the other: a new generation that's taking them on. Many of them are barely past the startup stage. Not even 20 years old.
That forces the established companies to reinvent themselves.
And that's where Catena-X can help. If you want to share your data through Catena-X, you have to rethink how you work. The old routines too. And the classic line: "we've always done it this way."
Right now, the established companies badly need that kind of push.
And then there's geopolitics.
What has always fascinated me about the car industry is how global it is. Its supply chains span the entire planet.
But the world is building more and more walls. Tariffs, export controls, trade wars.
So the question is: how do we keep working together across borders? And how do we keep our supply chains running?
Catena-X is one answer. What many people don't know: it's a global initiative. Catena-X is also active in North America, Japan and China. The goal is for data to fit together worldwide.
But it started in Europe. And I don't think that's a coincidence.
In tech, Europe often feels left behind. Caught between the US and China.
But I think that position in the middle can be a strength.
Whoever sets the standard sets the rules for everyone. That's why the US probably wouldn't adopt a standard from China. And China wouldn't adopt one from the US.
That's Europe's chance: to write the rules that keep our global car industry running. Even as the world drifts apart.
PS: A network like this only works if everyone takes part. Many small and mid-sized suppliers are still missing. The Data Space Accelerator helps them get on board: Watch the program walkthrough (Ad)
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A word from me
Your shortcut into European automotive
Selling to BMW, Bosch, or Continental from outside Germany? Good luck.
German automotive is a closed club. Built on trust, relationships, and decades of doing business face to face. Cold outreach doesn't work. Trade fairs cost €20,000 for maybe 3 real conversations. And nobody takes meetings with companies they've never heard of.
I spent 10 years inside Mercedes-Benz. Today, 100,000 European automotive decision-makers follow me. From team leads to board level. They trust me. Because I speak their language. Literally.
One partner generated 250 webinar signups. Another got 60 qualified leads at OEMs.
I'm your bridge into German automotive.
That’s all for today.
Until next week,
Philipp
And as always: If you find value here, share it with someone who should read it too. That helps me a lot.