EV Battery Track-and-Trace

Led by the Supply Chain (SC) Working Group, this pilot demonstrated the potential use of MOBI’s Web3 Infrastructure in multiparty applications for bidirectional track-and-trace in the global battery supply chain.

About Our Interoperability Pilots

Alongside our global community, we’ve demonstrated several potential use cases for Citopia and Integrated Trust Network (ITN) services through various pilot projects. Citopia and the ITN services are business-to-business (B2B) only. Together, Citopia and the ITN provide the necessary infrastructure for node operators to build out secure, seamless, globally compliant web services and applications. MOBI membership is required to operate a node on Citopia and/or the ITN. Contact us to learn more about becoming a node operator

Overview of the Pilot and the Problem It Solves

The EV Battery Track and Trace Pilot (“Pilot”) is spearheaded by MOBI’s Supply Chain Working Group with contributions from Accenture, AIOI, Altaventure, Anritsu, Arxum, ASJade Tech, Aucnet, Autodata Group, AWS, Blockedge, BMW, CEVT, Dana, DENSO, DLT Labs, DMI, Fifth-9, Ford, Hitachi, Honda, Kaula, IBM, IOTA, ITOCHU, Marelli, Mazda, Nara Institute, Nissan, ParkMyFleet, Politecnico Di Torino, Quantstamp, R3, Reply, State Farm, Stellantis, Southeast Toyota Finance, SyncFab, Spring Free EV, Thirdware, Trade Log, TICO, Vinturas and USAA.

As the use of batteries increases in various industries and applications, such as electric vehicles and renewable energy storage, stakeholders must align on a standardized approach to promote quality assurance, safety, and circularity in the global battery value chain. In recent years, landmark regulations in the US, EU, Asia, and other regions across the globe have placed increased emphasis on ensuring information traceability in the battery supply chain. Measures such as the US Treasury’s Section 30D Guidance on EV Tax Credits and EU Battery Regulation mandate the implementation of digital records to track the complete lifecycle of batteries, underscoring the need for a battery passport: a digital credential containing key information about the battery’s composition, state of health, history, and more.

Ensuring compliance with these and other emerging regulations around the globe requires a standardized framework that preserves proprietary information, ensures traceability and accountability, and remains accessible to appropriate stakeholders. Within the global battery value chain, countless public and private stakeholders operate with distinct processes for managing sensitive business and consumer data. Due to this siloed approach, multiparty data exchange between suppliers, battery manufacturers, and producers requires costly one-off integrations. However, in complex battery supply chain networks where trust incurs significant frictional costs, the industry lacks the interoperability and standardized framework for authenticating battery materials, sourcing, recycled content, and performance.

To this end, MOBI and its members have co-developed a decentralized Web3 solution framework rooted in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) trusted identity standards — one that facilitates seamless, privacy-preserving, globally compliant coordination and data exchange.

This pilot leveraged MOBI’s Web3 infrastructureCitopia and the Integrated Trust Network (ITN) — to demonstrate its potential use in establishing an interoperable, bidirectional track-and-trace system (Global Battery Passport System) for securely collecting, handling, and sharing battery data across organizational boundaries. The pilot leveraged Citopia Self-Sovereign Digital Twins™ (SSDTs™) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs) to simulate traceable, privacy-preserving interactions between EV batteries and ecosystem stakeholders such as manufacturers, suppliers, and consumers.

The ability to track and trace battery components from raw material sourcing to production, use, and end-of-life will greatly enhance visibility in the value chain, enabling stakeholders to build applications for Global Battery Passports, battery state of health (SOH) and state of charge tracking, battery second life, recall management, and many more.
Stakeholders:
Vehicle Manufacturers (OEMs); Suppliers; Logistics Providers; Customs; Material Extractor and Processor; Financial Institutions(FIs)/Lenders/Servicers; Dealerships; Third Party Data Consolidators; and Consumers

What the Pilot Demonstrated

The pilot included a workflow to reliably track and trace assets in the supply chain using Citopia and the ITN, demonstrating the full lifecycle of a VC from issuance, presentation, verification, and revocation. To achieve this, a Battery Birth Certificate (BBC) was issued by the supplier. The BBC (stored in a battery’s SSDT™) contains key information about the battery such as its serial number, energy capacity, chemical composition, and charging & discharging characteristics.

The BBC was linked with the battery components to establish a provable association between the credential and the physical asset. The BBC was then transferred to different stakeholders, creating a series of Verifiable Presentations that can be used to prove the chain of custody.

Later, the battery credential was linked with the Vehicle Birth Certificate (stored in a vehicle’s SSDT™, defined by MOBI VID Standards) when installed by the OEM. When dealing with faulty batteries that were returned to the supplier, RevocationList2020 from W3C’s VC standard was implemented to revoke the vehicle or battery credentials if the components of the vehicle or battery were changed.

Our Innovative Solution

Self-Sovereign Digital Twins™: trusted decentralized identity for interoperability and business automation

Currently, digital transactions rely on identities issued by centralized platforms to prove their credentials. However, in addition to being vulnerable to fraud, identity theft, and data leaks, centralized approaches to identity management fail to address the trust problems created by the rise of decentralized services, IOT, and Generative AI. As digitization advances, it will become increasingly challenging — and costly — to verify data authenticity, secure digital perimeters, and ensure cross-border regulation compliance. This is critical in the battery supply chain, which includes hundreds of thousands of stakeholders in regions across the globe.

Overcoming these challenges calls for a new solution. The White House’s Federal Zero Trust Strategy (2022) underscores this need by directing federal agencies to adopt a Zero Trust framework by the end of FY 2024. Zero Trust requires every entity to authenticate and validate every other entity for every single digital transaction at all times. Since this is not possible through Web2/centralized means, we must leverage Web3 technologies and principles to automate emissions tracking using Citopia Self-Sovereign Digital Twins™ (SSDTs™).

What are SSDTs™?

SSDTs™ are portable digital twins that can automatically authenticate identity and selectively disclose pertinent data for Web3 transactions at the edge. SSDTs™ combine standards from W3C, MOBI, IEEE, ISO, SAE, and others with Zero-Knowledge cryptography to offer the data privacy and autonomy needed to engage in secure, tamper-evident transactions across the connected ecosystem. SSDTs™ enable cross-industry interoperability and business automation through:

  • Enabling seamless verification and validation of identities and transactions

  • Empowering the creation of regulation-compliant data privacy solutions

  • Providing the ability to obtain and monetize data at the moment of transaction without the need to open up databases / store data

  • Serving as platform-agnostic, legacy system compatible “universal translators,” eliminating the need to build new infrastructure / APIs

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Interested in learning more about MOBI, our community-owned and operated Web3 Infrastructure, and our interoperability pilots? Contact us at connect@dlt.mobi to get in touch with the team!

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