Why Excel fails the battery passport
Carbon footprint comes from the manufacturing plant. Recycled content from the cell producer. Material origin from a mining company four tiers down. State of health updates every time the battery ages. Each piece sits in a different company, a different system, a different country.
Under EU Regulation 2023/1542, the economic operator is responsible for the passport being complete and correct. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐫. If the data is missing or wrong, the liability doesn’t travel back up the chain.
February 2027 is the deadline for EV and industrial batteries over 2 kWh. Companies that are still solving this with spreadsheets will spend most of that runway fixing data quality.
Getting there means 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 how data moves between actors, 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 and 𝐦𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞-𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞, and 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐮𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 as the battery ages. That’s what the passport actually requires.
Why Excel breaks when battery passport data spans multiple companies
From February 2027, every EV and industrial battery over 2 kWh sold in the EU needs a digital battery passport. Carbon footprint per manufacturing plant, recycled content share, raw material sourcing, state of health, due diligence reports. It’s not one spreadsheet. It’s dozens of data points that live in different companies, different systems, different countries.
And somebody has to be responsible for all of it.
Under EU Regulation 2023/1542, that somebody is the economic operator. The manufacturer, importer, or whoever places the battery on the EU market. You can’t point to a tier-3 supplier in South Korea and say the data gap is their problem. If the passport is incomplete or wrong, it’s your liability.
DPP data lives across dozens of systems. Excel moves data around, it doesn’t keep it connected. And by the time a supplier sends back half the fields updated two weeks later, the data you have is already wrong.
Carbon footprint comes from the manufacturing plant. Recycled content from the cell producer. Material origin from a mining company four tiers down. State of health updates every time the battery ages. Each piece sits in a different company, a different system, a different country.
A lot of companies are still trying to manage this with Excel files sent over email. That works fine when you’re tracking your own internal data. It completely falls apart when you need verified, live, structured data from eight different companies across four tiers of a supply chain, and you need to keep it updated as the battery moves through its lifecycle.
The most time-consuming part of passport implementation is often not the technical setup. It’s onboarding suppliers and fixing poor-quality data that originates deep in the supply chain. Excel doesn’t solve that. It adds to it. Every file is a dead end. No version control, no audit trail, no machine-readable structure that feeds into a digital passport system.
The battery passport isn’t a one-time submission either. State of health data needs updating as the battery ages. If a negative event occurs, it gets logged. Recycled content figures can change between model years. Raw material suppliers, cell producers, OEMs, repair shops, and recyclers all contribute key information at different points in the lifecycle.
February 2027 is closer than it sounds. Companies that are still in “we’ll figure it out with a spreadsheet” mode are going to spend the next 12 months doing supplier onboarding and data cleaning instead of compliance.
Getting there means standardising how data moves between actors, making it comparable and machine-readable, and keeping it updated as the battery ages. That’s what the passport actually requires.
