Battery passport — the EU's digital record for EV batteries

The passport comes from the EU Batteries Regulation. It is not a paper document handed over with the car but a digital record attached to the individual battery, and the party that places the battery on the EU market is responsible for keeping it accurate, complete and up to date. Think of it as the battery’s own file, separate from the certificate of conformity that describes the vehicle.

Who needs one, and from when

Article 77 of the regulation requires a passport for every electric vehicle battery placed on the market or put into service from February 2027. The same article also covers light means of transport batteries and larger industrial batteries; portable batteries and ordinary starter batteries are outside it. For electric vehicle batteries no capacity threshold applies, so it concerns every battery-electric car sold new in the EU from that date. The regulation applies whether the battery was produced in the Union or imported, and whether it is fitted to a car or to another vehicle.

The date is the one in the consolidated text on EUR-Lex, checked in November 2026. Some of the surrounding rules, such as who counts as having a legitimate interest, are left to implementing acts, so check the current text before relying on the detail.

What it contains and who can see what

Access is tiered by Annex XIII of the regulation, and the QR code is the entry point to all tiers.

• Anyone can read the public part, which describes the battery model: chemistry and material composition, hazardous substances, carbon footprint, responsible sourcing, recycled content, rated capacity, voltage, power, expected lifetime, warranty period, round-trip efficiency, and waste-management information.
• Persons with a legitimate interest, such as repairers, remanufacturers, second-life operators and recyclers, can see more detailed composition, spare-part and dismantling information. For an individual battery, the purchaser or parties acting for them can also reach performance and durability values, the state of health, the battery’s status (original, repurposed, re-used, remanufactured or waste) and usage data such as charge and discharge cycles, accidents, operating temperature and state of charge.
• Notified bodies, market surveillance authorities and the Commission alone see the test reports that prove compliance.

Who exactly qualifies as having a legitimate interest is left to an implementing act, so the practical reach of the detailed tier depends on that rule rather than on the car brand.

What it means when buying

The passport is meant to make a battery’s history checkable instead of asserted. For a new car, the public tier lets you compare what the maker declares about chemistry, recycled content, carbon footprint and the warranty period. For a used car, the value lies in the individual-battery data: a recorded state of health and usage history are exactly what a seller’s word cannot prove, and they bear on degradation expectations and on resale value.

Keep the limits in view. The passport records what the responsible operator supplies; it does not replace a battery warranty, and it does not tell you what a warranty will cover. How much of the individual-battery data a given buyer will actually be able to open is set by the access rules, not by the existence of the QR code.

Chinese-made vehicles

The obligation falls on whoever places the battery on the EU market, so a car built in China is covered exactly as a European one. In practice the importer or manufacturer entity selling in Europe has to obtain the underlying data from the battery maker and keep the record current. We have not seen an importer publish what its passport will show or when buyers will be able to open it. Until then, ask the importer directly whether the car’s battery will carry a passport and which parts a private owner can read.

Related: battery warranty · SOH · degradation · CoC