With the rapid rise in the application of the lithium-ion battery (LIB), especially in the automotive sector, its thermal management has become an important concern. Thermal management of LIB requires numerical modeling efforts to acknowledge the battery thermal behavior at different charging and discharging rates to validate the experimental outcome and hence real performance. The present research work discusses a numerical modeling approach to simulate the temperature distribution inside a cylindrical LIB using "finite difference analysis" (FDA) formulations. A multipartition heat generation model is implemented to investigate the thermal behavior of the LIB at different discharging rates. The numerical results are validated by published data for the Li-ion 18650 cell. Temperature distribution inside the LIB for "both-tab" and "radial cooling" is compared. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the "both-tab" surface cooling approach over "radial cooling" at two different discharge rates (1 and 2 C) with varying heat transfer coefficients (25, 50, and 100 W m À2 K À1 ). The reduced axial temperature differences of approximately 50%, i.e., 1.9 C, in the LIB through "both-tab" cooling compared to radial cooling indicate the significance of the choice of cooling approach.