Standards Development

Scope

Currently there is no common international standard for the safety of batteries for light electric vehicles in the sense of electrically power assisted cycles (EPACs) and smaller mobility devices. The industry for these applications and hence for the batteries for these devices is growing and the products are manufactured, assembled, and sold worldwide. Therefore, there is a need for an IEC standard for common internationally defined safety requirements replacing the national/regional standards.

The existing international battery safety standards (ISO 18243, ISO 6469) are for electrically propelled mopeds, motorcycles and road vehicles. These are not applicable for the EPACs and smaller mobility devises:

• The standard for EV batteries (ISO 6469) applies to road vehicles and permanently installed batteries. These two characteristics do not cover the needs and safety aspects of EPACs and smaller mobility devices.

• The standard batteries for mopeds and motorcycles (ISO 18243) explicitly excludes EPACs. Additionally, the defined requirements are designed for road vehicles and do not match the needs for batteries for EPACs and smaller mobility devices considering their size, complexity and use cases.

The main topic of this new project is the safety of batteries. In result, the battery expertise as well as the expertise of the use conditions within the applications in scope is needed. Therefore, it is proposed to start a new IEC project within IEC TC 21, which is the Technical Committee for secondary cells and batteries and has a broad expertise on batteries. Other TCs with possible interest (ISO TC 149 for cycles, IEC TC 125 for e-Transporter, ISO TC 22 for Road vehicles, IEC TC 69 for Electrical power/energy transfer systems for electrically propelled road vehicles and industrial trucks) have been identified. They are listed as TCs for coordination in this NWIP and are encouraged to send experts to the new Working Group.

The proposed new IEC standard does not need to be developed from scratch but can use the European Standard EN 50604-1:2016 + A1:2021 + A2:202X as a basis. These three documents are attached to this NWIP for information. In the following the scope of EN 50604-1 + A1 is displayed. This scope is very broad and there might be some overlapping with standards from other TCs (e.g. ISO 18243, ISO 6469). In order to avoid any overlapping, it is proposed to redefine the scope as part of this new IEC project and to consider the MoU in SMB/4483/INF. A first proposal of a revised scope is displayed below, but still subject to change.

Original scope from EN 50604-1:2016 + A1:2021:

This standard specifies test procedures and provides acceptable safety requirements for voltage class A and voltage class B removable lithium-ion battery (packs and) systems, to be used as traction batteries of or for electrically propelled road vehicles. This standard is related to the testing of safety performance of battery packs and systems for their intended use for a vehicle.

This standard is not intended to be applied for the evaluation of the safety of battery packs/systems storage, vehicle production, repair and maintenance services.

Light EV includes all electrically propelled vehicles of category L1 up to category L7 according to the definition of ECE-TRANS-WP29-78r6e and all electrically propelled or assisted cycles including plug-in hybrid road vehicles (PHEV), that derive all or part of their energy from on-board rechargeable energy storage systems (RESS).

This standard enables setting up a dedicated test plan for an individual battery pack/system subject to an agreement between customer and supplier. If required, the relevant test procedures and/or test conditions of lithium-ion battery packs and systems may be selected from the standard tests provided in this standard to configure a dedicated test plan.

NOTE 1 Testing on cell level is specified in the IEC 62660 series.

This document also applies to:

— built-in battery packs/systems in EVs

NOTE 2 Informative Annex HH gives information on possible tests for other chemistries.

This standard does not apply to:

– – individual cells;

– – non-removable battery systems;

– – primary Batteries (including lithium types);

– – batteries covered by the ISO 12405- series.

First proposal for new scope:

This International Standard specifies test procedures and safety requirements for voltage class A (according to ISO 6469-3:2021) lithium-ion batteries used as traction batteries for light mobility applications. In scope are batteries for:

• electrically power assisted cycles (EPACs) according to ISO/TS 4210-10:2020, speed-EPACS (S- EPACs), carrier-cycles and serial hybrids (SHs).

• Optional, depending on IEC TC125: personal light electric vehicles (PLEVs), personal mobility devices (PMDs) and e-transporters according to IEC 63281-1:2023

Not in scope are:

• batteries which are in scope of ISO 18243:2017+Amd 1:2020 and ISO 6469-1:2019+Amd 1:2022

• individual cells

• primary batteries

NOTE 3 For batteries for electrically propelled road vehicles see ISO 6469-1:2019 and ISO 6469-1:2019/Amd 1:2022. For batteries for electrically propelled mopeds and motorcycles see ISO 18243:2017 and ISO 18243:2017/Amd 1:2020.

Purpose

A committee internal voting within CENELEC/TC21X with the following question: “Does your national committee support the promotion of the homegrown EU standard EN 50604 to IEC?” was voted positively and there is a wide support in promoting EN 50604-1 to the international level at IEC.

An IEC standard for battery safety requirements of light EVs is missing and there are several regional and national standards in this field (e.g. EN 50604-1 in Europe, UL 2271 in NA). Therefore, this proposed IEC standard would close this gap and the common internationally defined safety level would be beneficial for all the products, which are manufactured, sold and used worldwide.

The idea is to promote the European Standard EN 50604-1 on the IEC level as a new project. This allows for a revision of the existing document, which would include the incorporation of the two amendments but also to take into account the comments received at the European committee internal voting and of course also the input from all the NCs on IEC level and other regional standards (e.g. UL 2271). The revision would also include to redefine the scope (see previous section on scope) and to update and align the content. After the alignment of the content of the new scope all the included applications will be defined in the terms and definition section of the new IEC standard.

Additional information is presented in the scope section of this NWIP.