With EV and HEV developments, battery monitoring systems have to meet the new requirements of car industry. This paper deals with one of them, the battery ability to start a vehicle, also called battery crankability. A fractional order model obtained by system identification is used to estimate the crankability of lead-acid batteries. Fractional order modelling permits an accurate simulation of the battery electrical behaviour with a low number of parameters. It is demonstrated that battery available power is correlated to the battery crankability and its resistance. Moreover, the high-frequency gain of the fractional model can be used to evaluate the battery resistance. Then, a battery crankability estimator using the battery resistance is proposed. Finally, this technique is validated with various battery experimental data measured on test rigs and vehicles.