This paper mainly investigates the sensitive characteristics of lithium-ion batteries so as to provide scientific basises for simplifying the design of the state estimator that adapt to various environments. Three lithium-ion batteries are chosen as the experimental samples. The samples were tested at various temperatures (−20 • C, −10 • C, 0 • C , 10 • C , 25 • C) and various current rates (0.5C, 1C, 1.5C) using a battery test bench. A physical equivalent circuit model is developed to capture the dynamic characteristics of the batteries. The experimental results show that all battery parameters are time-varying and have different sensitivity to temperature, current rate and state of charge (SOC). The sensitivity of battery to temperature, current rate and SOC increases the difficulty in battery modeling because of the change of parameters. The further simulation experiments show that the model output has a higher sensitivity to the change of ohmic resistance than that of other parameters. Based on the experimental and simulation results obtained here, it is expected that the adaptive parameter state estimator design could be simplified in the near future.