What a battery passport is
A battery passport is an electronic record about one battery, reached by scanning a QR code, a printed square barcode, on the battery itself. From 18 February 2027, the European Union requires one on every battery in 3 categories, electric vehicle batteries that power cars, vans, trucks and buses, light means of transport batteries weighing 25 kilograms or less that power e bikes and e scooters, and industrial batteries with more than 2 kilowatt hours of capacity. The rule comes from European Union Regulation 2023, 1542, also called the EU Battery Regulation, which entered into force in August 2023. The manufacturer or importer that places a battery on the market inside or outside the European Union carries the duty to attach the passport. A company with less than 40 million euro in yearly turnover does not have to include a due diligence report on where its raw materials came from.
How the deadline arrived
The regulation first appeared in December 2020, as part of a European Union plan called the Green Deal. It took 24 months to reach political agreement between the Council and the Parliament, 8 more months to enter into force, and then 42 more months before the passport itself becomes mandatory.
The regulation entered into force in August 2023 and states directly that the passport becomes mandatory 42 months later. MAOWCE calculated the first 2 gaps, 24 months from proposal to agreement and 8 months from agreement to entry into force, from the dates in source 1.
Show the numbers
| Proposal to agreement | 24 |
| Agreement to force | 8 |
| Force to passport deadline | 42 |
What a shopper can see
When a shopper scans the code, the law guarantees 3 things become public with no login needed, the carbon footprint of the battery, a measure of the carbon dioxide released making it, its detailed material composition, and the share of its materials that came from recycling rather than new mining. The law also sets a minimum recycled content that every new battery must contain, and requires that floor to rise over time. Today the floor is 16% for cobalt, 85% for lead, 6% for lithium and 6% for nickel.
These are legal minimums that rise over time, not the recycled content of any battery sold today.
Show the numbers
| Cobalt | 16 |
| Lead | 85 |
| Lithium | 6 |
| Nickel | 6 |
Who can see more than a shopper
A second tier, open only to someone who can show what the law calls a legitimate interest, unlocks the detailed part numbers needed to buy a replacement part, instructions for taking the pack apart safely, and the performance history of that one battery rather than just its model average. A third tier holds only the laboratory test results that prove a battery meets the law. Only outside auditors called notified bodies, market watchdogs, and the European Commission, the union executive body, can see those results.
One car already has a passport
Volvo Cars and the tracking company Circulor started collecting the data for a passport in 2019, tracing cobalt, nickel, graphite and lithium back through suppliers by checking supplier production records and energy bills. The result reached the road on the Volvo EX90, delivered from 2024, years ahead of the legal deadline. An owner reaches it through the Volvo Cars app or a QR code on the door frame, and sees the origin of those 4 materials, the carbon footprint of the pack, and its recycled content share.
Douglas Johnson Poensgen, chief executive of Circulor, the company that built the tracing system behind the EX90 passport, said this about what Volvo proved.
Volvo Cars has proven that this is possible at scale and will hopefully catalyse action across the industry.
Douglas Johnson Poensgen, chief executive of Circulor, the company that built the tracing system behind the EX90 passport. Source 3.