How Long Must a Battery Passport Stay Online? Hosting and Availability Duties

It is easy to think of the battery passport as a one-off deliverable: generate it, print the QR code, done. The availability duty is what makes that picture wrong. The passport has to stay reachable for as long as the battery is in service, which turns hosting into a lasting commitment. This guide explains what that means and how to plan for it.

The passport has to stay reachable

The EU Battery Regulation requires the passport to remain available. The data carrier on the battery links to the passport, and that link has to keep resolving to the hosted record while the battery is in use. A passport that goes offline, or a QR code that leads nowhere, is a compliance failure even if the passport was correct on the day it was made.

In practice the availability duty tracks the working life of the battery. See the wider picture in what is a digital product passport.

The regulation frames this in terms of the battery's life rather than a fixed number of years. The economic operator that placed the battery on the market is responsible for keeping the passport accurate, complete and available (Art. 77 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542), and the passport ceases to exist only after the battery has been recycled (Art. 77). At end of life, responsibility for the record passes to the party then handling the battery, such as the producer or the waste operator. So planning for the working life of the battery is the right instinct: there is no earlier cut-off you can count on.

Why this is different from a document

A filed document is finished once submitted. A hosted record is only as good as its uptime. Two consequences follow for importers:

• The web address must stay stable. The QR code is printed on physical batteries you cannot recall, so if the passport moves, every printed carrier breaks. Plan for the link to stay at the same address for the life of the battery. See the data carrier and QR code rules.
• Continuity outlasts your involvement with the product. Batteries can stay in service for years, well after you have stopped selling that model. The passport still has to be reachable, so hosting cannot depend on a system you plan to retire.

Industrial and storage batteries raise the stakes

For stationary storage and other industrial batteries, service lives can be long, which makes the availability duty especially demanding. A passport for a storage system may need to stay online for many years. See industrial battery passport requirements.

What to plan for

Because hosting is the lasting part of the obligation, treat it as an infrastructure decision, not a file export:

1. Choose hosting for continuity, able to keep passports online for years without manual upkeep.
2. Keep web addresses stable, so printed carriers never break.
3. Plan for handover, so a change of provider or a wind-down of a product line does not take passports offline.

This is the point at which build-versus-buy becomes a real question, since running passport hosting reliably for years is a commitment in itself. We take that up in a later commercial guide.

In short

A battery passport must stay reachable for the working life of the battery, so hosting is a lasting commitment rather than a one-off export. Keep the web address stable so printed QR codes never break, plan continuity that outlasts your involvement with the product, and treat long-lived industrial and storage batteries as the most demanding case. Confirm the exact duration against the regulation before committing.