Waymo found a second job for its old robotaxi batteries: keeping the lights on.
The autonomous vehicle company struck a deal with B2U Storage Solutions to repurpose battery packs as they're cycled out of Waymo's commercial fleet. The arrangement addresses a practical problem that scales with ambition — batteries degrade over time, and a growing 24-hour robotaxi operation means a growing pile of outgoing packs. B2U specializes in connecting retired vehicle batteries to stationary grid storage systems, where they can absorb and dispatch power before they eventually hit the recycling stream.
Battery packs don't stop being useful the moment they leave a car. A pack that can no longer sustain the constant, high-cycle demands of a commercial vehicle often retains enough capacity for stationary storage, which is a more forgiving workload. For Waymo, the deal turns what would otherwise be a disposal cost into something closer to a residual asset — and lets the company attach a sustainability story to routine fleet maintenance.
Nissan, BMW, and other automakers have run second-life battery programs for years with mixed commercial results. The question worth watching is whether the economics hold at Waymo's scale, or whether this partnership is better read as a green footnote than a serious line item.