Abstract In this paper, we investigate distributed thermal-electrochemical modeling of a Lithium-Ion battery cell to include the effect of temperature distribution across the thickness of the cell as a first step to study the module level temperature distribution at high charging rates. Most recent works have focused on lumped thermal models for a Li-Ion cell which ignore any temperature differential across cell thickness. However, even a small temperature differential across cell thickness at the cell level can contribute to significant temperature differential in the thickness direction of stacked-up Li-Ion cells at the module level. Such temperature differential can potentially impact the battery charging control system, especially at high charging rates. Here, the thermal-electrochemical partial differential and algebraic equations for a Li-ion cell are solved via a spatial finite difference method. Simulation results show that the temperature differentials over the cell thickness at the cell level are not insignificant, particularly at high charging rates.