China set out a digital identity system for every traction battery
A vice minister said the 2026 to 2030 plan will attach a digital identity to each traction battery so that its origin can be traced and its destination checked, alongside new administrative regulations and joint enforcement.
Xin Guobin, a vice minister at China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, told a State Council Information Office briefing on August 26 that the ministry would implement a digital identity management system for traction batteries during the 2026 to 2030 plan period.
Xin described the measure as a response to the coming wave of batteries retiring from service. He said the ministry would draft administrative regulations, run a joint enforcement campaign across government departments to bring order to the recycling market, and operate the digital identity system so that a battery’s origin can be traced and its destination checked. He set a target of at least one million tonnes of end-of-life traction batteries put to comprehensive use annually by 2030.
The commitment was made under a section of the briefing on industrial resource recycling rather than on vehicle software, and Xin gave no detail on the record’s structure, the data it would carry, or who would be able to read it.
China already operates a national traceability platform for traction batteries, established under an interim measure promulgated by six government departments on December 31, 2025 and in force since April 1, 2026.
Source: State Council Information Office · First reported by Gasgoo