The Battery Passport service, an innovative solution for dealing responsibly with electric vehicle batteries when they are no longer suitable for powering vehicles has been awarded grant funding from the Niche Vehicle Network, to produce a working solution by the end of March 2020.

The partners in this project are CodeSmith Technology, an innovative vehicle technology company, Electra Commercial Vehicles, a UK electric vehicle manufacturer and Warwick Control Technologies, a world leader in vehicle networks.

Our Battery Passport solution provides long term monitoring of the vehicle battery, providing continual analysing over its lifetime and the estimation of its future potential. The Battery Passport provides ubiquitous understanding across all battery and vehicle manufactures in the same way an odometer provides a simple way to determine the previous and future potential of a vehicle when buying from the second hand market.

Current European legislation on batteries places responsibility onto vehicle manufacturers for appropriate disposal of electric vehicle batteries at the vehicle’s end of life. This means that batteries must either be recycled or reused. Using a vehicle battery for another purpose is the most environmentally effective way of disposal.

A second life market for batteries already exists but it is constrained by the quality of batteries available. At present there is no simple way for a second life customer to purchase a used vehicle battery and fully understand both that battery’s history and its future potential. Without this understanding the second life market is incredibly cautious not wanting to take risk with vehicle batteries.