I'm replacing the battery in my 2013 Audi q7 TDI and was looking for the Battery's BEM code sticker before I hooked it on the charger. Turns out it was under the DANGER/POISON label. Just took a little finesse to peel away. Kind of cool.

 

Ron, only a battery purchased from the dealer will have BEM coding sticker. You'll have to fabricate something so the car knows a new battery was installed.

 

Wait I'm confused. Is this not that?...

 

That's strange. Isn't that a Walmart battery?

 

It sure is! I thought I remembered reading somewhere they pretty much all of these come from the same factory so I figured it must be somewhere. H9 is hard to find sometimes. 😅

 

I have the H7 version of the same battery in my basement. It's about 1 year old. I don't see that label but haven't lifted up the sticker as you did.

 

Ron, does your battery have a "Made in Germany" label?

 

Not likely; it's a JCB battery, made by Johnson Controls Battery Group. IIRC, their factory is in Kentucky or Missouri. I bought my last battery online from Autozone, IIRC, and they shipped the H9 AGM 'platinum' battery directly to my door from the factory, and it literally arrived FEDEX the day after I ordered it...crazy fast. Bought it online to get a sales promo offer 20% off on ship-to-home items, etc. Always check for online discount offers when buying auto parts...even a car battery.

Yes, most of that same AGM H9 battery line are manufactured locally by the Johnson Controls Battery (JCB code) factory. There's only a few car battery manufacturers worldwide, and so that's why they tend to all look exactly the same and have exact same specs on them...only the top 'store brand' sticker is different.

Often times, you will find a battery in an auto parts store will have the BEM code sticker (the flooded battery or AGM versions) and they will have a sticker saying made in Germany and having the Varta code. I've peeled up a few in the auto parts stores around me to see what they are actually selling. and was surprised by what I found. When I looked at the shipping label on the battery I received via FEDEX, I then looked up the location it came from, which turned out to be a huge battery factory in USA, which JCB Group had bought/ taken over a couple years ago...kinda interesting when you realize what items are a lot more generic than you might think...like major appliances, for example. Only a few factories worldwide actually produce all those brand names of major appliances. It's exactly the same with automotive batteries...put some lipstick on that pig (diff brand sticker/badging) and wholesale the same product to all retailers...now that's marketing.

 

Oh, and just by-the-by, my car did NOT take the JCB factory code, which is a known issue with the BEM system on the car, not an issue with the BEM code itself.

I ended up using the AGM part # (first series of BEM code), then the Varta code, and just made up a reference date code to match the install date in car for easy reference for the final dataset entry. The main item is the part#, which tells the BEM how to maintain/charge that type/size of battery correctly. AGM part # differs slightly from the flooded part #, etc.

 

I guess it's a little redundant at this point. I did not find a origin or manufacturer on the battery, not did the BEM code work. I received a big fat ERROR then lost communication to the module and had to key off and on to restart the procedure. Thought my vcds might've been funky so I plugged in my MCX+ and ran carista. Same error and loss of communication. Eventually I stumbled on some people have this issue and just used a battery of the same spec (105Ah, agm, h9) and ripped it's code from spareto, specifically (000915105CF).
Basically I eventually went from
THIS
000915105DL VAO 370810A14Y

TO THIS
000915105CF VAO 370811A14Y
(This was accepted, but I don't know if anything was benefited as a result, the battery warning went away)

If someone can help me change the second string to correspond to a recent date (battery manufactured JUN2024, I installed it today FEB2025) I would appreciate it. I don't know if the computer bases things off of date of manufacturing or installation and there is too much going on with the original BEM to figure out how it corresponds to a manufacturing year of 2018 🙃.
My new way was easy to interpret "06/24 ​​​BEM: 7P09151050 JCB240614E0PB"