Battery warming at low temperature is a critical issue affecting battery thermal management. In this study, the pulse self-heating strategy is proposed to enable quick and safe warming of lithium-ion battery at low temperature. The battery is heated up using pulse self-discharge. This strategy can heat up 18,650 commercial battery with a control circuit and alleviate the battery degradation during heating. Compared with continuous direct current self-heating, the battery can be heated up from -10 degrees C to 10 degrees C by pulse heating within 175 s while the direct current heating consumes 280 s with approximating polarization voltage. The effects of ambient temperature, switching interval, and initial state-of-charge on heating performance are further investigated. Heating duration is found to be insensitive to the switching interval in the studied range. Conversely, battery internal resistance and off-period voltage at different ambient temperatures and initial state-of-charges are found to be the predominant factors that influence heating duration. Heating duration in the range of 150-180 s is achieved at ambient temperature ranging from -10 degrees C to 0 degrees C. In real applications, pulse heating is recommended to be performed at higher initial state-of-charge (>0.8), at which heating duration is within 200 s. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.