Waymo’s spent Robotaxi batteries will be used as grid storage

Waymo Announce A deal with an energy storage company called B2U To use retired robotaxi batteries to serve power grids in California and Texas.

The deal helps answer the question of how Waymo is considering end-of-life treatment for the thousands of robotaxis it has deployed across the United States. Almost all of these cars are currently Jaguar I-Pace EVs, though The company recently began rolling out a limited number of pickup trucks It is built by Chinese automaker Zeekr.

Waymo said the partnership would include the deployment of “hundreds of megawatts of storage capacity” but did not provide any further details.

B2U is one of many companies that focus on reusing batteries rather than recycling them. Redwood Materials, founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel and backed in part by Waymo’s parent company Alphabet, recently built its own Second Life storage business using old electric vehicle batteries.