Auto Care Association Releases ACES 5.0 and PIES 8.0 Data Standards
The Auto Care Association announced the release of ACES 5.0 and PIES 8.0. These latest versions introduce enhanced capabilities designed to support more accurate, flexible, and scalable data exchange across the automotive aftermarket.
ACES (Aftermarket Catalog Exchange Standard) and PIES (Product Information Exchange Standard) serve as the industry's standardized, machine-readable XML methods for exchanging product fitment and product information data across the Americas. These standards are widely used by manufacturers, distributors, retailers, e-commerce platforms, and solution providers.
"ACES and PIES are foundational to how the aftermarket communicates product data," said Jonathan Larsen, vice president of digital products and standards at Auto Care Association. "These updates are focused on helping the industry deliver richer content, improve data accuracy, and adapt to evolving global and regulatory needs."
ACES 5.0 introduces support for vehicle- and part-specific non-diagram digital assets within the App Segment, multiple descriptions for a single digital asset, and expanded multilingual capabilities for the "MfrLabel" field.
PIES 8.0 adds Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) packaging data to support regulatory compliance, multiple package configurations at a single pack level, and digital asset file hashing and record sequencing to improve data validation and organization.
The updates to ACES and PIES make it easier to deliver richer product content, improve data consistency across partners, and better support compliance and evolving market demands, resulting in more accurate product listings, fewer errors, and more efficient data flow across the supply chain.
Updated schemas in this release include VCdb 2.0, Qdb 2.0, PCdb 2.0, PAdb 5.0, and Brand Table 2.0. The AutoCareVIP.com Catalog Assessment Reporting Tool now supports ACES 5.0 and PIES 8.0 files, providing users with a free tool to evaluate and improve the quality of their data.
For more information about Auto Care Data Standards, visit autocare.org/standards.