Abstract Battery thermal management system is of great importance to the performance and safety of electric vehicles. The conventional U- and Z-type air-based structures may fail to meet the thermal requirements under changing working conditions. This paper proposes a novel J-type air-based battery thermal management system by integrating the U-type and Z-type structures. A comparative parametric study of key design variables and priori optimized structures is first conducted with a newly developed battery electro-thermal model. Based on the parametric analyses, the grouped-channel optimizations are performed using surrogate-based optimization. Results show that there are 35.3%, 46.6%, and 31.18% reduction in temperature rise for U-, Z-, and J-type, respectively. The pros and cons of the J-type structure are further explored by comparing with the optimal U- and Z-type structures. A further J-type optimization regarding the manifold configuration is also conducted to show that the optimal settings of the air-based cooling system vary across working conditions, and the J-type structure is able to be adaptively controlled to satisfy the cooling requirement. Corresponding experiments are also conducted to validate the modeling and optimization results.