With hybrid and electric vehicles development, automobile battery monitoring systems (BMS) have to meet the new requirements. These systems have to give information on state of health, state of charge, available power. To get this information, BMS often implement battery models. Accuracy of the information manipulated by the BMS thus depends on the model accuracy. This paper is within this framework and addresses lithium-ion battery modeling. The proposed fractional model is based on simplifications of an electrochemical model and on resolution of some partial differential equations used in its description. Such an approach permits to get a simple model in which electrochemical variables and parameters still appear. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.