What Is the Automotive Commerce Protocol (ACP)?

The Automotive Commerce Protocol (ACP) is an open standard for how automotive retail data should move between systems in an AI native environment. It is the successor to the ADF XML format that dealers have used for over two decades. ACP models the full transaction lifecycle, from first conversation through negotiation, financing, delivery, and post-sale, instead of just the lead submission. The full specification is available at ACPspec.org.

I authored ACP because after building multiple AI products for the automotive industry, I kept running into the same wall. The AI worked. The data it produced was rich and contextual. And the auto lead data format the industry used to move that data between systems was a standard from the year 2000 that was never designed for any of this.

What is ADF XML format and how do dealers use it?

ADF stands for Auto-lead Data Format. It is the XML-based standard that the automotive industry has used since around 2000 to share lead information between systems. When a customer fills out a form on a third party site like CarGurus or Cars.com, that lead gets packaged as an ADF XML file and sent to the dealer's CRM.

The ADF format is universal in automotive. Every major CRM accepts it. DealerSocket, ELead, VinSolutions, all of them. Every major lead provider sends it. It is the common language for dealer lead data and has been for twenty-five years.

ADF solved a real problem. Before it existed, leads came in through fax machines, phone calls, and unstructured emails. There was no consistency. The ADF format gave the industry a standard way to package lead information. Name, email, phone, vehicle of interest, vendor information. Clean, structured, universal.

For simple form-based leads, ADF still works fine. I want to be clear about that. ADF was the right standard for its era, and it deserves respect for what it accomplished.

The problem is that the way customers interact with dealerships has fundamentally changed. And the ADF XML format was never designed for what is happening now.

Why is ADF XML no longer enough for dealers using AI?

When the auto lead data format was created, a lead was a form submission. Someone filled out their name, email, and the vehicle they were interested in. That was the interaction. ADF captured it perfectly because there was not much to capture.

Today, a customer might have a twenty-message conversation with an AI assistant on a dealer's website. By the end of that conversation, the AI knows the customer's budget, their financing preferences, their trade-in payoff, the competitors they are comparing, their timeline, their preferred appointment days, and how ready they are to buy.

That is twelve or more buying signals from a single conversation. Any salesperson would want all of that before making the first phone call.

But the ADF format captures eight to fifteen data points. The rest have nowhere to go. They fall on the floor. The CRM shows name, email, and "interested in 2026 Camry." Eight signals, gone. Not corrupted. Not misread. Just gone. The ADF XML format did not have a place to put them.

I have written about this pattern before. I call it structured data loss. It is happening at every dealership running AI tools alongside a CRM that only speaks ADF.

The AI captured everything. The format could not hold it.

What does the Automotive Commerce Protocol do differently?

ACP was designed from the ground up for this new reality. Instead of modeling a lead submission, it models the entire transaction lifecycle in eight stages: inquiry, qualified, negotiation, finance, appointment, sold, delivered, and closed lost.

Every ACP envelope contains eight top-level objects that capture the full picture of an automotive commerce interaction.

source tells you where the interaction came from. Which platform, which channel, which agent type, what device, full UTM attribution.

lead carries customer contact information, vehicle interests, budget, trade-in details, and detected intents with confidence scores. Not just "interested in Camry" but "test drive intent at 97% confidence with a $580/month payment target and a trade-in with $12,000 payoff."

transaction holds the commerce state. What stage the deal is in, the full offer history with revision tracking, finance terms, appointment details, delivery confirmation.

conversation preserves the full transcript with message roles, timestamps, handoff state, sentiment, and topic extraction. Every word the customer said and the context around it.

events captures a chronological stream of eighteen standard behavioral event types. Page views, intent signals, pricing interactions, trade-in evaluations. Everything the customer did, in order.

ai_analysis includes purchase probability, recommended next actions, objections detected, and engagement level. This is the only optional object. Everything else is required.

Where the ADF XML format gives you eight to fifteen data points per lead, an ACP envelope carries one hundred to two hundred or more. Not because it is bloated. Because modern automotive commerce actually produces that much meaningful data, and until now there was no format designed to hold it.

Is ACP compatible with the ADF format?

Yes. ACP does not break ADF. It extends it.

The migration path is designed to be incremental. You do not rip out ADF on day one. ACP envelopes can be deterministically converted back to ADF XML for any downstream system that still requires it.

The three-phase migration works like this.

Phase one: dual output. Your AI generates ACP envelopes alongside ADF XML. Your CRM keeps consuming ADF as usual. The ACP envelopes get stored for validation so you can see exactly what you have been missing.

Phase two: ACP primary. Your CRM switches to reading ACP as its main format. ADF continues as a fallback for downstream systems that have not upgraded yet.

Phase three: ACP only. ADF output gets deprecated. A deterministic converter stays available for emergency backward compatibility. ACP becomes the sole exchange format.

Nobody has to make a hard switch. The ADF format keeps working throughout the transition. ACP just gives you access to everything ADF was leaving on the floor.

How does ACP relate to CORD?

This is a distinction that matters.

CORD (Canonical Object Relational Data) is universal. It is a domain-agnostic standard for how AI-generated data should be structured so it survives the journey between any systems, in any industry. Healthcare, real estate, finance, HR. Anywhere AI output needs to move into a legacy system without losing meaning.

ACP is automotive-specific. It is built on CORD's principles but tailored for the data structures, workflows, and lifecycle stages of automotive retail commerce.

Think of CORD as the foundation. ACP is the first building on that foundation. Other industries will build their own domain-specific protocols. Automotive happened to be first because that is where I live and that is where I kept hitting the wall.

I wrote in detail about what CORD solves and why I had to build it.

Is the Automotive Commerce Protocol free to use?

Yes. ACP is Apache 2.0 licensed. Anyone can use it, extend it, fork it, build on it. No license fees. No permission needed.

ACP is governed by a vendor-neutral advisory board with a public RFC process for specification changes. No single vendor controls the protocol. Two advisory board seats are permanently reserved for independent community contributors.

The full specification, JSON schema, migration guides, and reference implementations are all available at ACPspec.org.

What CRMs and platforms support ACP?

Drivevex CRM is the first CRM with native ACP ingestion, full envelope storage, intent-based routing, and transaction state mapping, with ADF XML fallback generation built in.

AutomotiveAI is the first AI sales agent platform generating ACP envelopes from live customer conversations across chat, voice, and SMS channels.

Both are in production. The specification is open for any CRM, DMS, or agent platform to implement.

Where does this leave dealers today?

If you are a dealer running AI tools right now, the ADF format is still your standard. It works. Your CRM reads it. Your lead providers send it. Nothing breaks tomorrow.

But if you are noticing that your AI captures rich, detailed customer conversations and your CRM only shows name, email, and "interested in Camry," that gap is real. That is not a CRM problem or an AI problem. That is a format problem. The pipe between them was built for form submissions, not for AI-generated commerce data.

ACP is the pipe that was built for what is actually happening now.

ADF was the right standard for its era. ACP is what comes next.

Structure before tools. Strategy before speed. Systems before scale.

The Automotive Commerce Protocol is open, documented, and available for any platform. Read the full specification, explore examples, validate your envelopes, and see the ADF to ACP migration guide at ACPspec.org.