GB/T 47591-2026, whose Chinese title translates to Road Vehicles — Information Requirements for Power Battery Product Nameplates, Labels and Electronic Identification, is China’s first national standard specifying what a traction battery’s identification data must contain and how it must be recorded, both on a physical nameplate and inside an electronic tag. It was released as part of a package of 384 recommended national standards approved by the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) and the Standardization Administration of China (SAC), and took effect on 30 April 2026.
Disclaimer: This is not a definitive guide, just an indication, and it is important that you always go back to the source for legislation.
Scope and Applicability
The standard applies to traction batteries fitted in road vehicles — cells, modules, and the pack or system level — and sets out three linked layers of identification: a physical nameplate, a physical label, and an electronic identifier, each carrying a defined set of data fields (manufacturer, model and specification data, safety warnings, and a unique traceability code). Like GB/T 43568-2026, it carries the “GB/T” prefix and is a recommended rather than mandatory standard, but in practice it is expected to be pulled into CCC certification and battery registration checks, which gives it real weight in the market even without mandatory status.
What the standard actually defines
Rather than setting a safety or performance bar, GB/T 47591-2026 is a data-structure standard. It specifies which fields must appear on the physical nameplate and label, what the electronic identifier must encode, and how read/write access to that electronic data is tiered between different actors in the battery’s life — manufacturer, vehicle owner, service technician, and end-of-life recycler each get different levels of access to the record. The intent is a single battery-level identity that can be checked consistently at every stage from the factory to the recycler, rather than each participant in the chain keeping its own incompatible paperwork.
Development and Status
GB/T 47591-2026 sits within a wider Chinese push to give every traction battery a persistent digital record. It was published alongside the Interim Measures on the Recycling and Comprehensive Utilisation of Retired New Energy Vehicle Power Batteries, issued jointly by MIIT and five other government bodies and in force since 1 April 2026, which is the policy instrument requiring a “Digital Battery Identity Document” for each battery and a national reporting platform to hold it. GB/T 47591-2026 is best read as the technical layer underneath that policy: it defines what the identity document actually has to contain and how it’s physically and electronically represented, rather than mandating that it exist in the first place.
GB/T 47591-2026 does not replace or loosen the requirements of GB 38031-2025 (traction battery safety) or GB/T 43568-2026 (solid-state terminology and classification) — a battery pack must still satisfy both regardless of how its identification data is structured. It is purely an identification and traceability layer sitting alongside those standards.
International Context
The nearest international parallel is the battery passport requirement in the EU’s Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, due to apply to EV batteries from 2027. Both regimes are built on the same basic idea — a persistent, checkable digital record tied to an individual battery — but the EU passport bundles in mandatory carbon-footprint and recycled-content disclosures that GB/T 47591-2026 does not itself require; in China, those obligations sit instead with the recycling Interim Measures and other GB standards rather than this one. As with GB/T 43568-2026, there is no equivalent IEC or ISO standard yet defining a harmonised international format for this kind of battery identity data.
References
- GB/T 47591-2026, Road Vehicles — Information Requirements for Power Battery Product Nameplates, Labels and Electronic Identification, effective 30 April 2026.
- China Releases New Battery Product Identification Standard GB/T 47591-2026, MPR China Certification GmbH, May 2026.
- Interim Measures on the Recycling and Comprehensive Utilisation of Retired New Energy Vehicle Power Batteries, MIIT et al., effective 1 April 2026.
- GB/T 43568-2026, Electric vehicle solid-state battery — Part 1: Terminology and classification, Battery Design.
- GB 38031, Electric vehicles traction battery safety requirements, Battery Design.
See also: Status of Battery Passports in 2026