Vehicle passport

The End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation (EU) 2026/1738 creates a passport of its own for vehicles: the Digital Circularity Vehicle Passport. It is not an ESPR passport, but it must work with them.

When

• Art. 13(1): “From 1 September 2032, each vehicle placed on the market shall have a Digital Circularity Vehicle Passport.”
• The Regulation applies from 1 September 2028 (Art. 59(2)), with some provisions earlier. It repeals the End-of-Life Vehicles Directive 2000/53/EC from the same date, though parts of the Directive continue to apply until 31 August 2032 (Art. 57(1)).
• Its scope is staged (Art. 2(1)): passenger cars and light commercial vehicles first; special-purpose versions of them from 1 September 2029; buses, lorries, trailers and two- and three-wheelers from 1 September 2031.

What it requires

• Art. 13(2): the passport holds information on removing and replacing parts, components and materials; parts that still contain lead, mercury, cadmium or hexavalent chromium under a derogation; the declaration on recycled content; and the official spare-parts catalogue for the vehicle type. Access is free of charge.
• Art. 13(3): information already available through another passport is not duplicated in the vehicle passport, provided the two are interoperable.
• Art. 13(5): the information is based on open standards, interoperable, transferable without vendor lock-in, and machine-readable, structured and searchable.
• Art. 13(6): implementing acts, due by 14 August 2030, set out access, technical design, storage, availability after the manufacturer ceases to exist, updates by third parties, and where the data carrier goes.

How it connects to other passports

Art. 13(1) requires the vehicle passport to be aligned, interoperable and, where possible, integrated with other vehicle-related passports: in particular the battery passport under Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 Art. 77, the environmental vehicle passport under the Euro 7 Regulation (EU) 2024/1257, and passports under ESPR. An electric vehicle therefore carries a vehicle passport and a battery passport for its traction battery.

The Regulation also amends four other acts. For batteries, it replaces the table of restricted substances in Annex I of the Batteries Regulation, from 13 August 2026.

Where the software stands

The software records the Regulation and its 2032 date in its instrument catalog, but models no vehicle product group: it cannot issue a vehicle passport. Whether one should exist before the implementing acts say what the passport looks like is an open question. The software does build battery passports for electric-vehicle batteries; Battery DPP says what they carry today.

Read next

• Battery DPP: the passport an EV’s traction battery carries.
• Acts and standards: every act the code relies on.