Disclosed herein is a real-time nonlinear receding horizon control methodology for nonlinear battery management system. To increase the life of batteries, the problem is described as a tracking problem and is converted to a nonlinear on-line optimization problem. Different from the previous works, the nonlinear optimal problem is solved directly, without resorting to linearization techniques and/or iterative procedures. Based on the stabilized continuation method, the backward sweep algorithm is implemented to minimize the degradation as well as track the desired trajectory, and the optimal control strategy is integrated in real time. The stability of the systems is guaranteed provided that the horizon length is sufficiently long. Simulation results demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed scheme on nonlinear battery systems. When there are estimation error and model mismatch of the system, the proposed scheme still performs well.