Battery model plays an important role in the simulation of electric vehicles (EVs) and states estimation of the batteries in the development of the model-based battery management system. To build a battery model with enough precision and suitable complexity, firstly this paper summarizes the seven representative battery models, which belong to the simplified electrochemical models or the equivalent circuit models. Then the model equations are built and the model parameters are identified with an online parameter identification method. The battery test bench is built and the experiment schedule is designed. Finally an evaluation is performed on the seven battery models by an experiment approach from the aspects of the estimation accuracy of the terminal voltages. To evaluate the effect of the number of RC networks on the model's precision, the battery general equivalent circuit models (GECMs) with different RC networks are also discussed further. The results indicate the equivalent circuit model with two RC networks, the DP model, has an optimal performance. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.