Battery passports will be mandatory for electric vehicles sold in the EU from February 2027, with the aim of providing greater visibility about exactly what goes into the battery and where it has come from.
The digital documents will be linked to the vehicle’s VIN number and available via a QR code which, when scanned, can reveal detailed information about the sources and nature of the raw materials prior to manufacture, along with post-manufacture details, such as capacity and condition.
The move is part of the EU Battery Regulation bill, which was passed in August last year and requires OEMs – either vehicle and/or battery manufacturers, depending on who builds the battery – to disclose the carbon emissions of battery production and gradually include greater proportions of recycled material in the run up to 2035.
It is not limited to EVs, as the initiative also applies to any battery with a capacity of more than 2kWh. For context, a 2kWh battery might be used as a zero-emission generator for a caravan or motorhome on a campsite. The Ford E-Transit Custom has a 64kWh battery.
Battery passports will effectively shine a light on often murky and interchangeable supply chains and are said to provide greater transparency and opportunities to scrutinise the pre-production process.
“Many [OEMs] don’t know their supply chain and, often, [the suppliers] are changing about three or four times a year, based on the contracts which, especially in the mid-tier section, are changing based on lower cost,” says Ellen Carey, chief external affairs officer at Circulor, which specialises in supply chain visibility and creates battery passports.
Carey says the passports will cost between $8 (£6) and $14 (£11) per battery and “create accountability of that supply chain – who touched what, when and where”, and alert manufacturers to changes in the supply chain so they could “interrogate the activity”.
“It becomes less about procurement and procuring supplies,” she added. “It becomes more about supply chain visibility and management to distribute the accountability across the whole thing.”
Circulor’s battery passport tracks cobalt, lithium, graphite, nickel and mica. It uses industrial internet-of-things (IoT) data to identify the organisations it believes to be in the manufacturer’s supply chain and acquires application programming interface (API) data and enterprise resource planning (ERP) data from those organisations’ systems to generate a digital twin – a virtual copy of the physical material, complete with an electronic paper trail.
“We take the information we know about that nickel, and we create a digital replica of it,” says Carey. “Where was it mined? What was its geolocation? What was its weight? What was the elapsed time in terms of processing? Then, all of that information that we gather – at every step along the journey about that same piece of nickel – we can tie to that VIN number or that QR code.”
European authorities have not yet specified precisely what information a battery passport must contain (at the time of writing, the regulation was in its secondary legislation phase) but a three-year, €8.2m (£6.5m) project known as the Battery Pass Consortium is defining exactly that. Led by change company Systemiq and funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), the project’s 11 partners include industry heavyweights such as Audi and BMW, with Circulor as tech lead.
The consortium has proposed including 90 pieces of information in a battery passport, spread across seven categories, which are: general battery and manufacturer information; compliance, label, certifications; battery carbon footprint; supply chain due diligence; battery materials and composition; circularity and resource efficiency; and performance and durability.
To preserve intellectual property, manufacturers will be able to access the full scope of information in a battery passport, but other parties will be limited in what they can see.
“Not everyone gets to see the same data,” says Carey. “The automotive OEM gets to see everything. The [buyer] gets to see the general information, maybe some of the supply chain information and certainly the state of capacity, and the state of health. That data changes depending on the role in either the primary sourcing or the circular economy. Maybe the [recycler] really only sees the type of battery it is and how to safely remove it and handle it.”
Outside of Europe, battery passports can be used for different purposes and in a non-legislated capacity. Though not a formal requirement, Carey says they can serve as evidence that a vehicle qualifies for Clean Vehicle Tax Credits in the US, which provide a kickback of up to $7,500 (£5,938) depending on the vehicle and its emissions.
They can also be set up to bypass the initial manufacturing and supply chain elements and focus instead on everything that happens to the battery from the point of manufacture onwards. Carey refers to this as “naked battery passports” and explains that they are designed for markets with a greater emphasis on second-hand buyers and used EV residual values.
“You can start anywhere along that value chain,” she says. “We can start with capacity, state of health – the basics. You don’t have to start at the cobalt, the nickel and the lithium.
“Two other economies that are approaching battery passports are India and California. [They] start with naked battery passports, rather than where things came from. California’s primary focus is to disclose information about a battery from first owner to second owner. So, state of health, state of capacity and what’s the value to ensure that … [used EV buyers] reap the benefits or have transparency.”
Despite the limitations on what they will see compared with manufacturers’ access, battery passports will reveal much more to owners about exactly what goes into their vehicle than ever before. Carey says this could influence buying decisions and pointed out that, as of February 2027, manufacturers operating in Europe would need to ensure the information would be available and communicated to regulators, dealers and consumers.
“The interesting part about this is that it is really the first time, product-wise, that such granular information about upstream activity is getting shared with the end consumer, so that gives them purchasing information and purchasing choice.
“The OEM needs to work with the supply chain as well as the dealer on the relay of all that information. The information about the batteries needs to be made available to regulators and also the general public, including the buyer. They should have access to that QR code.”
As usual, passenger cars make the first move and, in June, Volvo announced that its flagship EX90 electric SUV – which is about to start production – would be the first car fitted with a battery passport.
What condition my condition was in
Leasing companies, auction houses, and retail groups are now monitoring battery state-of-health (SoH), with a view to creating a certification scheme to illustrate the remaining battery capacity of used EVs to boost confidence among buyers.
What Van? understands several industry heavyweights are keen to create an initiative akin to an approved used scheme or an HPI check for second-hand EVs with a high level of remaining battery capacity, likely a minimum of 85–90%.
The aim is to provide transparency, foster uptake and counter misinformation about EVs by providing assurance that second-hand examples are credible ownership prospects with a realistic degree of longevity.
The data is typically gathered from OBD, 12-volt and USB sockets, with companies such as Altelium, Aviloo Gmbh, ClearWatt and Moba specialising in the practice. Telematics firms Targa Telematics and Bridgestone Mobility Solutions, which owns Webfleet, have also confirmed to What Van? that they and their contemporaries are specifically monitoring SoH.
“Dealers are quite a major link in the chain to give second-life vehicles some certainty,” says AFP chair, Paul Hollick. “If they’re going to start selling EVs, beyond consumers wanting them, they need to know that they’re not going to be selling the next generation of a lemon.
“Anything the industry can do to give that level of certainty is going to be great, because I’m really worried about who’s buying second-hand and third-hand EVs and we need to try and create market stimulus.”
“The industry needs some kind of certification and it’s not necessarily, at this point, around measuring the financial value of a vehicle,” adds Philip Nothard, insight director at Cox Automotive. “It’s more about the confidence and the transparency of information.”
He suggests an independent industry-standard scheme, similar in notion to NAMA condition grading, but cautions that the number of companies currently exploring
the concept could result in a fragmented approach.
“All the companies are testing different things, which is where we are hitting a brick wall. We need to come to an agreement that ‘these are the things you test’….and it doesn’t matter who does it.”
