The battery regulation does not look at ownership, but at who first places the battery on the market within the EU or offers it. If you rent or lease batteries, e-bikes or scooters with an integrated battery, it depends on what role your company plays in this: if you act as a manufacturer, importer or distributor, the obligations may lie with you. If you yourself rent products from a party that already fulfils that role, the obligation usually lies elsewhere in the chain.
For companies working with shared scooters, swap stations for e-bike batteries, lease bikes for staff or rented industrial batteries, this is more relevant than it may seem. The regulation makes no exception for rental models; it looks at the moment when a battery is first made available on the EU market, regardless of whether the end user buys or rents.
When renting falls under the regulation
If your company imports batteries or vehicles with batteries itself and then rents these to end users, you are in practice often the party that first makes the battery available in the EU. This applies for example to shared scooter companies that import their own vehicle fleet, or to providers of swap stations that purchase batteries themselves and then make them available for a fee. In this situation, the obligations associated with the role of manufacturer or importer lie with your company, including having the digital passport drawn up. What these roles entail in detail has been worked out earlier in the knowledge base, where per situation is explained which role fits you.
When it probably does not affect you
It is different when you lease batteries or vehicles from a supplier that itself already acts as an importer or manufacturer. An employer that leases e-bikes for staff through a leasing company uses a product for which the passport obligation already rests with a party higher up in the chain. The leasing company or the underlying importer bears responsibility for the passport in that case, not the employer who merely makes the bikes available to employees. The same applies to companies that rent industrial batteries as part of a machine or installation supplied and maintained by another company.
Swap stations and circulating batteries
Battery swap models form a separate category, because the same physical battery successively reaches different users without ownership changing. The battery itself does not change role; the passport belongs to the physical specimen and must remain linked to the QR data carrier, even if the battery is exchanged between vehicles and users. For companies operating such a station, it is important to be clear about who originally imported the batteries and who is responsible for keeping the data up to date during its lifetime.
If you combine multiple roles
Many companies in the e-bike and scooter industry both sell and rent, sometimes within the same range. The regulation does not assess this at company level, but per product or product group: for one model you may act as an importer, for another as a distributor who already works with a passport supplied by a supplier. It is therefore useful to determine per product line which role applies, rather than assessing this for your entire range all at once. You get a first indication of this by letting a few questions show where your company stands for a specific product.
Get this clear for your company
Because rental and lease arrangements can vary considerably, it is advisable to check for each model who has imported the battery, who acts as the supplier in the relationship with the end-user, and whether a battery passport already exists that has been drawn up by another party in the chain. This article describes how the regulation views this, but does not make a judgment about your specific situation; for that you can consult a lawyer or the competent supervisory authority. General answers to frequently asked situations are collected on the page with frequently asked questions, and anyone who wants to know where the information on batpas.eu comes from will find that explained on the page about how batpas.eu works.
Are you uncertain whether a rental or lease model within your business falls under the regulation? Do the free quick-scan or browse through the knowledge bank to see which situation comes closest to yours.