Andrew J. Hawkins

The electric vehicle battery recycling and manufacturing venture is rolling out new battery recycling and retreival bins in San Francisco and Nevada to collect old, unused, and unwanted batteries. No special packaging or disassembly required. Inside the bins, a microcontroller uses infrared, ultrasonic, and other sensing tools to scan each item and maintain safe conditions. Any batteries up to 300Wh will be accepted.

That’s triple the number of fares it did in 2024, the company said today. Assuming that the average Waymo ride costs $20.43, that could mean in excess of $286 million in revenue for the company. Of course, some of that money is going toward taxes and other ride-hailing fees. Still, that’s an impressive number for a company that only operates in five cities in the US — and soon to grow to 20 cities internationally. Waymo also says it’s now on track to do 20 million lifetime trips by the end of the year.

Trump was talking about Japanese kei cars, specifically, but Stellantis is hoping his good will extends to Italian quadricycles like the Fiat Topolino. The automaker says it will bring the micro-EV to the US sometime next year, but I’m not convinced American car buyers will be as charmed as the president. Last year, Fiat had to pause production of the slightly larger 500e after record-low sales. At one point Fiat dealers were practically trying to give them away.