Circulor: the London platform behind the world's first EV battery passport

A dark Volvo EX90 electric SUV parked on a street in Stuttgart-Vaihingen, Germany. — A Volvo EX90 in Stuttgart, Germany. Each EX90 carries a Circulor-powered battery passport, reached through a QR code on the door frame. Illustrative: the passport itself is digital. Image: Alexander Migl, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The problem

Battery supply chains are long, concentrated and hard to see. Ore is mined in one country, refined in another, made into cathode and anode materials in a third and assembled into cells and packs elsewhere. Each step can involve child labour risks, heavy emissions or materials from countries that buyers or governments want to avoid. Paper certificates and supplier declarations are easy to copy and hard to check.

Regulators are closing that gap. The EU Batteries Regulation requires proof of responsible and circular sourcing for batteries sold in Europe, and from 18 February 2027 every electric vehicle battery, every light means of transport battery and every industrial battery above 2 kWh must carry a digital battery passport reached by a QR code (European Commission).

The product

Circulor sells a software platform that follows the physical flow of critical materials as they change form, rather than just collecting paperwork. Its main parts are:

material traceability, mapping each tier of the supply chain and tracking batches of lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and other materials;
embedded carbon, calculating emissions across Scope 1, 2 and 3 for each material journey;
due diligence reporting on human rights and other risks;
Battery Passport, a digital record attached to each individual battery, with origin, components, recycled content and carbon footprint (Circulor).

In 2022 eeNews Europe described the platform as blockchain-based, and said it was used by Volvo Cars, its sister brand Polestar and Jaguar Land Rover (eeNews Europe).

How it works

Map: Circulor and the customer identify suppliers at each tier, from mine and refinery to cell maker.
Capture: suppliers record each batch as it moves and changes state, with production and energy data.
Link: the platform connects inputs to outputs, so a cell can be traced back to the materials that went into it.
Calculate: embedded carbon and recycled content are worked out from primary data.
Publish: a passport is created for each battery and linked to a QR code for owners, recyclers and regulators.

Timeline

Date	Milestone
2017	Circulor founded in London
2019	Volvo Cars and Circulor start working together
Jun 2022	USD 25 million Series B led by The Westly Group
2023	Partnership with Automotive Cells Company (ACC) covering lithium, graphite, cobalt and nickel
4 Jun 2024	Volvo announces the EX90 will carry the first EV battery passport, powered by Circulor
9 Apr 2025	Powin partnership for battery passports on grid storage systems
Jun 2025	Powin files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
18 Feb 2027	EU battery passport becomes mandatory

Impact and numbers

Volvo EX90: owners can see the origin and production journey of the cobalt, nickel, graphite and lithium in their battery, the share of recycled material and its carbon footprint, through the Volvo Cars app or a QR code on the door frame (Circulor). The EX90s with passports were built at Volvo’s plant in Charleston, South Carolina, and delivered in Europe and North America from the second half of 2024. Vanessa Butani, Volvo’s head of global sustainability, said the passport was arriving almost three years before EU rules require it, and that Volvo would gradually extend it to all its electric cars (electrive; Reuters).
Cell makers: ACC, the European battery venture backed by Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz and TotalEnergies’ Saft, uses Circulor for supply chain mapping, material traceability, embedded carbon, due diligence and passport creation, over an initial three years (Circulor).
Grid storage: in April 2025 Circulor agreed to trace graphite, lithium, aluminium, steel and copper to Powin’s LFP storage systems, and said all Powin packs for Europe would carry a passport (Circulor).
Policy role: Circulor says it was the technology lead for the German government’s Battery Pass project, which defined and demonstrated how the EU passport should work.
Funding: the 2022 Series B, led by The Westly Group, brought total funding to USD 44.2 million, with investors including the Volvo Cars Technology Fund, BHP Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures (eeNews Europe).

Honest caveats. Traceability software does not make a supply chain clean; it shows what suppliers report, and the record is only as reliable as the data and audits behind it. Circulor’s “world first” and its supplier count are its own claims, and other traceability providers compete for the same passport work. Its customers carry real risk: Powin filed for Chapter 11 protection in June 2025, two months after the passport deal was announced (TechCrunch). Several investors are also customers or suppliers, such as Volvo Cars and BHP, which buyers may want to weigh. The founder stepped back from day-to-day leadership when Giles Palmer, founder of Brandwatch, became CEO (Circulor). Circulor’s latest public funding round dates from 2022.

What’s next

With the EU deadline in February 2027, Circulor is extending passports from cars to energy storage and to other products covered by the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, and is pitching its tools for the EU Forced Labour Regulation and carbon border rules.

Why it matters for Europe / green buyers

The battery passport is the EU’s first large digital product passport, and it is due within months. For European carmakers, cell makers and storage integrators, it turns supply chain transparency from a sustainability report into a condition of market access. It also gives recyclers and second-life battery firms the data they need on chemistry and history to reuse batteries safely; electrive noted that German second-life company Voltfang could use passport data to judge a battery’s health before putting it into stationary storage.

India is building its own battery industry and its own rules. The Battery Waste Management Rules 2022 place extended producer responsibility on producers and importers to collect and recycle waste batteries, with rising targets for recovering materials (PIB). Indian cell and pack makers that want to sell into Europe will need EU-compliant passports from 2027, and the same traceability data could help prove recycled content under India’s own rules.