The thermal behavior of a large-format lithium ion cell has been investigated during measurements on cell and battery level. High current discharges up to 300 A are the main topic of this study. This paper demonstrates that the temperature response to high current loads provides the possibility to investigate internal cell parameters and their inhomogeneity. In order to identify thermal response caused by internal cell processes, the heat input due to contact resistances has been minimized. The differences between the thermal footprint of a cell during cell and battery measurements are being addressed. The study presented here focuses on the investigation of thermal hot and cold spots as well as temperature gradients in a 50 Ah pouch cell. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the difference between charge and discharge can have significant influence on the thermal behavior of lithium ion cells. Moreover, the miscellaneous thermal characteristics of differently aged lithium ion cells highlight the possibility of an ex-situ non-destructive post-mortem-analysis, providing the possibility of a qualitative and quantitative characterization of inhomogeneous cell-aging. These investigations also generate excellent data for the validation and parameterization of electro-thermal cell models, predicting the distribution of temperature, current, potential, SOC and SOH inside large-format cells. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.