The Mercedes EQA, Hyundai IONIQ 5, and BMW i4 hold onto their battery health better than any other electric car, according to the largest independent study of used-EV batteries ever run.

That’s the ranking that falls out of 500,000-plus battery tests published by Austrian diagnostics firm AVILOO, which measured 20 popular EVs at up to 150,000 km (93,000 miles) of use.

A commercial sodium-ion battery from Chinese manufacturer Hina matches Tesla’s lithium-ion cells on manufacturing quality and internal design, according to an independent teardown published in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports Physical Science.

Researchers at Germany’s RWTH Aachen University measured cell-to-cell resistance varying by just 5.3% across 120 cells — a sign of tightly controlled mass production rivaling the best lithium cells on the market.

Thousands of electric vehicles in Waymo’s autonomous robotaxi fleet may eventually give up their used batteries for a very different purpose—contributing up to hundreds of megawatt-hours of stationary energy storage to local power grids.

That prospect comes from a “strategic supply agreement” announced by Waymo and B2U Storage Solutions on June 4. B2U has been repurposing thousands of used batteries from various electric vehicles by installing them in large stationary energy storage projects. Such energy storage facilities can capture excess renewable energy during low demand periods and release such energy when local power grids are experiencing peak demand periods.

“Our business is getting the full residual value out of electric vehicle batteries after they're no longer suitable for automotive use,” Freeman Hall, CEO of B2U Storage Solution, told Ars. “Waymo puts a lot of miles on EVs and their model is expanding rapidly, and so we're just very pleased and honored to be able to work with them.”

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