Mint Explainer | What do India’s draft battery identity number guidelines mean for EVs?
The Indian government plans to introduce a 21-digit Battery Pack Aadhaar Number (BPAN) for electric vehicle batteries, enhancing traceability and providing vital information about battery health and origin, benefiting manufacturers, owners, and financiers.
NEW DELHI: Your electric vehicle (EV) battery could soon have its own Aadhaar number, with the road transport and highways ministry proposing a new 21-digit Battery Pack Aadhaar Number (BPAN). This identity number will provide key metrics about the battery such as its health, and will allow battery makers, importers, vehicle owners, financiers and insurers to get accurate information about the effectiveness of the battery, which makes up for as much as half the cost of an EV.
Another key use-case is the identification of the origin of batteries, which could help the government assess whether claims of indigenously made batteries under the ₹18,100-crore production-linked incentive scheme for advanced chemistry cells are genuine.
Mint explains the rationale behind the move that will also benefit buyers of second-hand EVs.
What is a Battery Pack Aadhaar Number?
The ministry of road transport and highways proposed the creation of a Battery Pack Aadhaar System, a local digital identification and data storage system, on 2 January. Each battery pack will have the 21-digit BPAN, which will allow end-to-end traceability of batteries throughout their lifecycles.
BPAN will provide information about the raw material, manufacturing, usage, recycling and disposal of the battery pack. This system will apply to electric vehicle batteries, industrial batteries above 2 kilowatt-hours (kWh) in capacity, and to starting, lighting and ignition (SLI) batteries used in vehicles.
Key information embedded within BPAN includes Battery Manufacturer Identifier (BMI), Battery Descriptor Section (BDS), Battery Identifier (BI), Battery Material Composition Section (BMCS), Battery Carbon Footprint (BCF), and Battery Dynamic Data (BDD). The BDD includes real-time data on the battery’s health and performance.
“Among the most critical of these parameters are the battery status, battery category, and State of Health (SOH)," the ministry said in the draft guidelines, allowing timely diagnostics, repair and maintenance.
Why did the government develop this system?
The government wants a system that benefits the local market. The ministry noted in the guidelines that similar systems in the EU – the EU Battery Regulations and the EU Battery Passport Regulations – can be useful benchmarks for lifecycle transparency, traceability and digital compliance approaches.
The government is of the view that India’s EV market, with its potential scale, especially in two- and three-wheelers, its price sensitivity, and its diverse stakeholder base warrant compliance “without imposing EU-level data burden and infrastructure cost on mass-market batteries", the ministry said.
India’s EV sales topped 2 million in 2025, from about 1.9 million in the previous year, according to Vahan, the government's registry of vehicles. The domestic EV market is almost entirely reliant on imports of lithium-ion batteries, which surged to about $3 billion in FY25 from about $1.8 billion in FY22, according to commerce ministry data. India currently assembles lithium-ion cells to make battery packs.
Who will use BPAN?
Anyone who wants to make choices based on the health and performance of a battery could look for the battery’s BPAN and make an assessment. For financiers who dole out loans to vehicle buyers to purchase EVs (often used for buyers’ livelihoods), tracking battery health becomes critical.
“Lenders use vehicle telematics, battery health monitoring, and maintenance records to track asset performance and usage. However, the lack of standardised frameworks for reporting battery degradation and forecasting residual values in India complicates asset monitoring," said Dhiraj Agarwal, chief business officer at Mufin Green Finance, an EV financier.
The ministry has listed EV financiers, insurers and used-vehicle buyers as key stakeholders in the guidelines as all of them can potentially make better economic choices based on the static and dynamic information that a BPAN could provide.
Static data refers to information about the battery that remains unchanged, such as its origin and composition. Dynamic data refers to the attributes of the battery that change or evolve over time, such as its health and performance.
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