CORA first, BPN second

From February 2027, the EU Battery Regulation requires a digital battery passport for electric vehicle batteries, light means of transport batteries and industrial batteries above 2 kWh placed on the EU market. Every one of those batteries needs a record that travels with it and that the right people can read.

The obvious move would be to build a battery passport app and be done. I didn't, and the reason is the most important design decision in the project.

Two layers, on purpose

CORA (Certified Origin & Record Assurance) is the framework. It is a trusted-network framework for digital product passports and supply chain transparency: a permissioned shared ledger for organizations, product records and verifiable references to documents (the files themselves stay with their owners), a gateway that handles identity and access, and a console for whoever operates the network.

BPN, the Battery Passport Network, is the product. It is the portal where a manufacturer or an importer signs in, registers batteries, links each document by a verifiable reference and keeps the passport up to date. The documents stay in the company's own storage.

CORA doesn't know what a battery is. Battery data is configured on the network, not written into its core. BPN knows everything about batteries and nothing about how the network keeps its records.

Why split them

The rules will keep moving. Battery passport requirements are still being detailed. When the battery data changes, BPN and its configuration change. The foundation doesn't.

Batteries are the first product, not the last. The same problem, several companies proving facts about one product without any single company owning the record, shows up in other supply chains too. With CORA, a new sector is new configuration and a new portal, not a new system.

Roles stay clean. The network operator and the companies on the network are different parties with different powers. Each economic operator signs in with its own certificate. Nobody shares an admin account, and nobody can quietly rewrite someone else's history.

What it means if you make or import batteries

You don't have to care about any of this architecture. You need a place to register each battery, reference its documents while the files stay in your own systems, and know the record will hold up. That's BPN.

The architecture matters for one reason: the thing you rely on in 2027 shouldn't have to be rebuilt in 2028.

BPN and CORA are both part of the Innovation Pilot Program. If your company puts batteries on the EU market, get in touch and join early.