The power and energy densities of battery will decrease at cold temperature and the heat preservation is necessary to keep the working temperature. In this paper, the lattice Boltzmann model for phase change material based battery thermal management cold temperature is constructed and the effects of thermal conductivity, latent heat and environmental temperature have been considered. The results show that with the latent heat of phase change material (PCM), the temperature of battery decreases slowly and the temperature distribution can be guaranteed. However, once the PCM adjacent to the interface of battery and PCM, the temperature of battery drops faster and the temperature standard deviation rises sharply. Besides, the lower thermal conductivity, greater latent heat and higher environmental temperature are able to slow down the solidification process of PCM and keeps the temperature of battery. However, with larger latent heat of PCM, the battery temperature distribution gets more non-uniform, which is able to decrease the cycle life of battery. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.