The rapid growth of transportation demand has been enlarged strongly which has promoted electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries. However, the inconsistencies within the battery pack will deteriorate over the lifecycle and affect the performance of electric vehicles. Therefore, various thermal management systems and equalization systems have been applied in battery management system to deal with the inconsistencies, extend battery service life, and improve safety performance. This review summarizes the origination of inconsistency within lithium-ion batteries from production to usage process, and then introduces the classification methods and application scenarios of the balance management system in detail. Based on the circuit topology, equalization systems can be classified into passive and active topologies. Active topologies
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.