Lithium-ion batteries are fast becoming the battery of choice in applications such as electric/hybrid electric vehicles (EV/HEV) and renewable energy systems. This increasing usage demands an improved reliability of the battery systems, which in turn heavily relies on the control and optimization algorithms. Of particular importance is ensuring that each lithium-ion cell within a battery pack remains strictly within an acceptable charge range to avoid untimely degradation of the battery pack. Unfortunately, current battery models make the design of charge equalization circuitry difficult due to their limitations. The aim of this paper is to develop a component-wise control-oriented physics-based battery pack model to facilitate implementation of advanced model-based control and optimization algorithms. In the first stage some existing results are used to obtain a simplified electrochemical ODE model of an individual lithium-ion cell. Then, the cell model is used as the building block of the complete battery pack model. Different charge/discharge scenarios are presented to illustrate the potential of the modeling approach in facilitating the implementation of advanced control and optimization algorithms in improved power equalization and hence prolonging the battery pack lifetime.