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Used Waymo Robotaxi Batteries Become Backup Storage For Power Grids (arstechnica.com) 89

Posted by BeauHD from the new-lease-on-life dept.
Waymo and B2U Storage Solutions have struck a "strategic supply agreement" to repurpose used batteries from Waymo's electric robotaxi fleet into stationary storage for California and Texas power grids. The arrangement could give robotaxi batteries a second life storing renewable energy after they're no longer suitable for vehicle use. It will also "support B2U projects in regions where Waymo's autonomous robotaxis operate -- meaning the used Waymo batteries could bolster the local power grids that Waymo vehicles rely upon for charging," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Waymo's "proactive maintenance" for its autonomous vehicles includes identifying opportunities to "refresh the battery to improve efficiency overall for our fleet," Adam Lenz, head of sustainability and environment at Waymo, told Ars. "That's when we look to these second-life applications, because there's still a lot of life left in the battery," he said.

Waymo did not specify the average mileage at which it swaps out batteries or retires vehicles from service. But Waymo robotaxis drive around much more each day than the typical EV, which means the Waymo fleet is likely to experience faster usage-related degradation of battery capacity over time. The company confirmed to Ars that "some of these vehicles have now been serving riders for years and have mileage beyond what a normal consumer drives."

[...] "Put a little haircut on that in terms of degradation and the effective capacity that would be left in those batteries when they're suitable for repurposing, and we're still talking about pretty significant capacity per battery," Hall said. The growing Waymo robotaxi fleet could lead to "pretty large numbers in terms of megawatt hours of capacity that can be deployed pretty quickly" for stationary energy storage supporting power grids, he suggested.

The agreement gives Waymo discretion over when and how many used batteries will be turned over to B2U. But the companies confirmed that B2U has "already started receiving smaller initial quantities of batteries" from the Waymo fleet. Over time, the agreement could give B2U "hundreds of megawatt-hours" of additional storage capacity from Waymo's thousands of electric vehicles, Lenz said.

Used Waymo Robotaxi Batteries Become Backup Storage For Power Grids More | Reply

Used Waymo Robotaxi Batteries Become Backup Storage For Power Grids

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  • It's the the recyclable battery equivalent to putting a difficult to decomission nuclear plant into protective status or SAFESTOR, in the case of the MSRE

    • Re:Translation: No thought given to recycling (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Friday June 05, 2026 @09:02AM (#66176608) Journal

      There's plenty of thought given to recycling [redwoodmaterials.com]; Lithium battery recycling is a steadily growing industrial sector.

      But you know what's better than recycling? Not throwing out something that's still perfectly usable.

      Not sure if you're old enough to remember, but the original slogan was "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle." The words were in that order for a reason. This would be the "Reuse" part, by the way.
      =Smidge=

      • Already, the battery are too depleted to be used for what they were intended; what happens when they can't even shore up the power grid by a significant amount. If they were perfectly usable--they'd still be in the cabs.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          No, they are not too depleted. Cars are very power hungry - the average 4 banger with 150 horsepower has over 100kW on tap - which would drain the vast majority of EV batteries in somehwere between half an hour and an hour. Meanwhile, the average house consumes about 1-1.5kW on average per day.

          Even the largest grid scale storage only really capable of doing 1MW. And those installations are much larger than 10 EV batteries.

          Just because a used EV battery can't supply its 100kW peak doesn't mean it can't be re

        • Already, the battery are too depleted to be used for what they were intended; what happens when they can't even shore up the power grid by a significant amount. If they were perfectly usable--they'd still be in the cabs.

          Not at all.

          Car batteries have to have high storage to weight ratios. A reduced-capacity battery holds less power but still weighs just as much.

          But weight doesn't matter for grid storage. If the batteries only have half as much capacity, just stack up twice as many of them. And in fact it's not a case of "half capacity". I'd bet Waymo retires them when they get to 80-90% of capacity, because reduced capacity means more time spent charging and less time spent working. If the grid storage system gets a battery with 80% of its original capacity, it can likely use that battery for decades before it has to be retired and recycled.

          And, of course, lithium ion batteries are highly recyclable, so there's no reason not to expect them to be recycled when they're finally taken out of service in 2060 or so.

          • If the grid storage system gets a battery with 80% of its original capacity, it can likely use that battery for decades before it has to be retired and recycled.

            If they are actually still at 80% of their capacity then they are overachieving. The batteries used for grid are fundamentally different designs and chemistries optimising for as low cost as possible instead of weight and discharge capability like in cars. As it stands if you go to CATL and buy a run of the mill battery for EVs you'll get something like their Qilin product at 280Wh/kg. If on the other hand you go to ... CATL and buy their absolutely densest top of the line battery storage solution (for smal

        • >Already, the battery are too depleted to be used for what they were intended

          By definition, yes, though it's ultimately up to the battery/car owner to decide if the battery is no longer suitable for their needs.

          > what happens when they can't even shore up the power grid by a significant amount

          Then they get recycled. It'll take at least another 15+ years to reach that point, meanwhile they are doing their new job to an acceptable level of performance. Again, recycling was never off the table and was a

    • Well yes that's the point. Recycling is THE LAST 'R'.

      1. Reduce.
      2. REUSE - the thing that is happening here.
      3. Recycle.

      In that specific order. There's absolutely *NO* reason you should recycle an EV battery at end of life while we live in a world of battery storage capacity shortage on the grid. The grid does not need to maximise Wh/kg like your EV does.

      And number 1. is handled in continuous advancement of battery tech which, despite Slashdot's ignorance and general pessimism on the topic, is demonstrating a

  • I know quite a bit about EV battery packs. They hide the true remaining usage from the factory so that lowering capacity over time isn't seen until it actually happens. Then it uses the BMS to simply bring down an entire section or cell inside the battery due to one single bad module but continues to charge it. The car will only flag the battery pack as "bad" when such a ridiculous count of the battery cells are bad that any remaining ones have nearly zero life left as well. THEN they finally get rid of the
    • Sometimes cells do go bad, but inevitably all the cells will become worn out, in the case of lithium cells--from the point of manufacture.
    • Which is very similar to how SSDs work. They all include buffer capacity so as the NAND blocks die off, the user never notices. So the 1TB SSD may contain 1.5TB of NAND inside, but you don't know, and you don't need to know, as long as it keeps delivering 1TB of storage.

      Different companies have different levels of transparency about battery state-of-health, and there's no standard right now to make sure you can compare between manufacturers. Tesla tends to report state-of-health that drops from 100% relativ

    • They hide the true remaining usage from the factory so that lowering capacity over time isn't seen until it actually happens.

      Except it's something you can easily verify by doing a discharge test. Maybe you can provide a citation that this data is hidden? Or rather that factories are lying to you, given how many cars actually show you the battery health?

      No I won't take your word for it random internet ... I was going to say person, but who even knows if that is true.

  • Check out this amazing project: What is Battery Emulator? Many manufacturers sell home battery systems to enable homeowners to store power collected from the grid, or renewable sources, to use at times when electricity demand is higher. However almost all of these home battery systems charge a high cost for every kilowatt hour (kWh) of capacity you buy. https://github.com/dalathegrea... [github.com]
  • B2U, and a couple of other firms, have been reusing EV batteries for some time to create grid storage solutions. The only change here is that Waymo is doing this formally rather than B2U using various other EV battery packs that become available without naming names (*cough* Tesla *cough*).

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