works with university students. He is a mentor and a judge at Stanford University School of Engineering for the course “Value Creation for the real Economy,” the oldest entrepreneurship course that bred the start-up ecosystem across the world. He’s also been a business mentor at The Blum Center
for Developing Economies at the University of Califor- nia at Berkeley as well as an overall mentor for students teaching innovation, technology, entrepreneurship, clean energy, electric vehicle and sustainability ventures. “There’s a sense of gratitude in me for a place and a
country that has offered me so much,” he added. Arguably, however, his most impactful work is for the
students at Oakland Unified School District, where he took on the role of school bus electrification in January 2022 and never looked back. Next month, Oakland will be the first major school district in the U.S. to transition to a 100-percent electrified fleet of school buses (74 in all) with the largest V2G facility in the U.S. All chargers are man- aged through Zum’s AI-enabled technology platform. “This is something which is very close to my heart,”
Did You Know?
Zum currently operates service for 4,000 schools across the nation in 14 states: California, Colorado, Con- necticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Utah, and Virginia. It operates 3,000 school buses and aims to have a 100-percent electric bus fleet in the coming years. Last month, the company won a $32 million rebate from from the U.S Environmental Protection Agency Clean School Bus Program, bringing the total funding to date to $58 million. The money will enable Zum to deploy over 200 ESBs across the U.S.
70 School Transportation News • JULY 2024
Prakash said. “I would say I’ve found my calling. The mission is great, the urgency is like I should have done it yesterday, and the team I have got is simply amazing. The whole ecosystem and Zum thrives on great teamwork.”
From Concept to Completion The Oakland 100 percent electrification transition idea was set when the district RFP was released in 2019. Prakash said Raney was the visionary behind the idea
of full-scale electrification. Early conversations started with three primary questions to answer: “Who will be the partners? How can it work? How can we future proof?” He noted that it took Zum 17 months from the date
of project conception to pass the first electrical current from the bus to a load discharge back to the grid. “One of the things that I always I have believed very
strongly in [is] to find partners and not vendors,” he said, noting there’s a big difference between the two words. He explained the key was working with utility Pacif-
ic Gas & Electric to find the right charge management technology. From there, Zum started engaging with
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