Accurate estimation of the capacity of a battery pack is essential for the battery management system (BMS) in electric vehicles. The SOCs and capacities of individual cells are the prerequisites for accurately estimating the capacity of a battery pack. This paper proposes quantitative analysis on how the estimation errors of individual cells' SOCs and capacities influence the estimation error of the battery pack capacity using an approach named Capacity-Quantity diagram (C-Q diagram). The analysis concludes that the estimation error of cell SOC has more influence on the estimation error of pack capacity than the estimation error of cell capacity does. The theoretical analysis is further validated by an experiment using six NCM batteries connected in series with different initial SOC variations. The results help to guide the determination of specifications, e.g., the estimation error of the SOC and that of the capacity, during the design process of a BMS. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.