Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 30, 2026

What CellPulse Does

CellPulse reads battery data from your electric vehicle through a Bluetooth OBD-II adapter and calculates a health score on your phone. No account is required.

Data Stored on Your Device

Battery health reports (cell voltages, temperatures, health score, vehicle information including the VIN) and your app settings are saved locally on your phone. Reports are not uploaded anywhere unless you share them yourself or opt in to telemetry (below).

Sharing Reports

When you share a PDF report, it may include the battery health score, cell voltages, temperatures, pack configuration, odometer, and a partially masked VIN. This sharing is initiated by you — CellPulse does not send reports to anyone automatically.

Battery Telemetry (Opt-In)

After your first scan, CellPulse asks whether you'd like to contribute your scan results to a reference dataset used for fleet comparison. This is off unless you turn it on, and you can change it at any time in Settings → "Share Anonymous Stats." If you opt in, each scan uploads:

• Battery measurements: cell voltages, temperatures, state of charge, current, charge limit, ambient temperature, and summary statistics (spreads and which cells are highest/lowest)
• Health results: the health score and the battery's state-of-health figure, and per-module health where the vehicle reports it
• Energy counters: usable capacity, energy content, lifetime energy charged and discharged, and — where the vehicle reports them — AC/DC charging counts and fast-charging share
• Vehicle information: make, model, year and trim (e.g., "Volkswagen ID.4 2021"), odometer reading, the battery configuration string reported by the battery controller, and the battery's manufacture date
• Battery controller identifiers: firmware version, system name, calibration ID, software/variant codes and module address information, as reported by the car. These describe the controller type and software, not you.
• A hashed VIN: a one-way hash of your VIN, used to recognise repeat scans of the same car. We never receive your VIN itself. Because VINs follow a predictable format, a hash is not full anonymisation: we treat it as pseudonymous data and never attempt to reverse it.
• A contributor token: a random code our server issues on your first upload and your phone sends with later uploads. It records that you have contributed, which is how contributors get fleet comparison free. It is stored in your iCloud Keychain (iPhone) or Google Block Store (Android), so it can survive reinstalling the app and sync to your other devices. Our server stores it with the dates of your first and latest upload and an upload count. It links your uploads to each other, not to your name or account.
• Technical details: the OBD adapter's model name, platform (iOS or Android), a random ID for each scan (to avoid double-counting retries), and the scan time

Our server also records the time it received the upload and a country code derived from your IP address. Your IP address itself is not stored with your scan data.

The following is never uploaded as telemetry:

• Your name, email, or any account information
• Your VIN in plain text
• Your location or GPS data
• Any data from your phone (contacts, photos, etc.)

Usage Data

CellPulse also records a small number of app events to understand which OBD adapters and vehicles work reliably and where scans fail. This is separate from telemetry: it contains no health score, no cell voltages or temperatures, and no odometer reading. It is on by default, and you can turn it off at any time in Settings → "Anonymous Usage Stats." The app works identically with it off.

The following is sent:

• App event names (e.g., app_launched, scan_started, scan_completed_success, telemetry_accepted)
• The model name of the OBD adapter you used (e.g., "vLinker MC-iOS") and the version string it reports
• Scan diagnostics: error categories (e.g., flow_control_setup_failed), how far a scan got, how many cells were read, the error code the car returned, and — when reading the battery configuration fails — a short excerpt of the adapter's raw response
• When no adapter is found: how many Bluetooth devices were nearby and the Bluetooth service identifiers they advertise (not their names or addresses)
• The manufacturer and model-line codes from your VIN — characters 1–3 and 7–8 only (e.g., WVG and E2 for a VW ID.4). Every car of that make and model shares these codes; they are used to check which vehicles the app supports.
• The first 20 characters of your battery configuration string (e.g., 82K096S3PLG0), which describes the pack type
• App version and build number
• Platform (iOS or Android)
• Country code (derived from your IP address by our server)
• A session ID that is generated when you open the app and reset every launch — it is never linked across sessions

The following is never collected as part of usage data:

• Any persistent device identifier
• Your full VIN, hashed or otherwise, or its serial-number portion
• Your battery health score, cell voltages, temperatures, or odometer reading
• GPS or location data
• Personal information of any kind

Where Data Is Stored

Telemetry uploads are stored on Cloudflare R2 (cloud storage). Usage data and contributor tokens are stored in Cloudflare D1 (a database). Individual scan data is never sold or shared with third parties. It is used to compute aggregate statistics (such as percentile scores across similar vehicles), which may be displayed in the app.

VIN Decoding

CellPulse sends your VIN to the NHTSA vPIC API (a free U.S. government service) to look up your vehicle's make, model, and year. This request goes directly to NHTSA — CellPulse does not store or relay your VIN through our servers.

Tips

Optional tips are processed entirely by the App Store or Google Play. CellPulse does not receive your payment details.

Website Analytics

This website (cellpulse.app) uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to measure aggregate website traffic, such as page views and referring sites. It does not use cookies. When you visit a page, your browser loads a small script from Cloudflare, and Cloudflare processes standard request information (such as your IP address and browser type) to provide the service, as described in Cloudflare's privacy policy. The CellPulse app itself does not use Cloudflare Web Analytics.

Third-Party Services

• NHTSA vPIC API — VIN decoding (U.S. government, vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov)
• Cloudflare — Website hosting and analytics; telemetry and usage-data endpoint hosting and storage
• Apple App Store and Google Play — Distribution and tip payments (their standard privacy terms apply)
• Apple iCloud Keychain / Google Block Store — Storage of the contributor token on your devices, if you opt in to telemetry

Children

CellPulse is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect data from children.

Changes

We may update this policy as the app evolves. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated date.

Contact

Questions? Email [email protected]