Battery management systems (BMS) in hybrid-electric-vehicle (HEV) battery packs must estimate values descriptive of the pack's present operating condition. These include: battery state of charge, power fade, capacity fade, and instantaneous available power. The estimation mechanism must adapt to changing cell characteristics as cells age and therefore provide accurate estimates over the lifetime of the pack. In a series of three papers, we propose a method, based on extended Kalman filtering (EKF), that is able to accomplish these goals on a lithium-ion polymer battery pack. We expect that it will also work well on other battery chemistries. These papers cover the required mathematical background, cell modeling and system identification requirements, and the final solution, together with results. This first paper investigates the estimation requirements for BEV BMS in some detail, in parallel to the requirements for other battery-powered applications. The comparison leads us to understand that the HEV environment is very challenging on batteries and the BMS, and that precise estimation of some parameters will improve performance and robustness, and will ultimately lengthen the useful lifetime of the pack. This conclusion motivates the use of more complex algorithms than might be used in other applications. Our premise is that EKF then becomes a very attractive approach. This paper introduces the basic method, gives some intuitive feel to the necessary computational steps, and concludes by presenting an illustrative example as to the type of results that may be obtained using EKE (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.