A half-million school buses across US could become an EV battery powerhouse feeding the grid
Zum EV charging station with school buses.
Zum
The nightlife of school buses is about to get more interesting.
Zum, which provides student transportation including EV buses to 4,000 schools across the country, is partnering with the Oakland Unified School District to start selling power stored in EV batteries back to the California utility grid.
Oakland is the first school district in the U.S. to go fully electric with its buses and will now be the first to test the concept of V2G (vehicle to grid) bidirectional charging. In effect, instead of the one-way charge into the vehicle, the school buses will be able to send their battery power back to the grid through Zum charging infrastructure.
Zum estimates that 2.1 gigawatt hours of energy can be sent from batteries back to the California grid annually. The company’s goal is to add 10,000 bidirectional EV school buses across the U.S. with 300 gigawatt hours of energy available to power grids each year. San Francisco Unified and Los Angeles Unified, much larger districts than Oakland, are expected to follow, Zum said. It also works with school districts in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Utah, and Virginia.
Zum ranked No. 31 on the 2024 CNBC Disruptor 50 list.
There have been pilots across the country to test school bus V2G business models, but Zum says the time has come to move beyond the test phase.
“We at Zum strongly believe it is time to move beyond pilots and deploy sustainability solutions at scale. Converting the Oakland Unified school bus fleet to 100% electric with VPP [virtual power plant] capability is the right step in that direction,” said Ritu Narayan, founder and CEO of Zum, in a release.
According to Zum, the 27 million students moved across the country to and from schools twice daily is the largest mass transit system in the country. The roughly 500,000 school buses are mostly diesel, contributing to emissions. Zum has the goal of being a net-zero transport provider.
Pacific Gas and Electric, which is based in Oakland, has partnered with Zum to enable its bidirectional charging station for EV buses in Oakland.
Zum EV school buses at a charging station.
Zum
The concept is considered a strong one given the fact that school buses are not in use during peak energy demand hours, for example, between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. This allows the buses, and their owners, to execute an energy arbitrage trade: charging up for their core daily task of moving students when energy prices are lower, and feeding battery storage back onto the grid when utilities will pay more for it per kilowatt/hour. As owner of the buses in use in Oakland, Zum will be the one to receive revenue from the grid deal, but in other cases where school districts own the buses, they can generate revenue. In some cases, the revenue from power sales could be split.
Ram Ambatipudi, senior vice president of business development at EV Connect, which provides EV charging solutions, said the school bus model is one of the most promising in the area of using EV battery storage in a bidirectional nature. He said one of the biggest challenges is getting utilities to set a predetermined rate schedule that will allow for the arbitrage play across power markets, generating the revenue opportunity for the battery owners.
“There aren’t a lot of established rate schedules,” Ambatipudi said. In addition, a lot has to go right to make the model work and is still being tested. “It’s been more of a pilot level because that interplay has to happen between the vehicle charging station hardware, and software management of the station, and the backfeeding into grid and having the economic benefit paid out by the utility. “Those market developments have yet to come,” he said.
The idea is similar in some ways to how owners of rooftop solar systems have been able to feed power back onto the grid in some markets, but in recent years, there has been pushback against these “net metering” relationships, especially in California. With buses, though, there is one key difference: the buses are not in use during the most important times of the day for the grid to have more power, and the buses can recharge at off-peak demand hours. Many rooftop solar power owners were selling energy supply back onto the grid when it was less needed.
And the arbitrage economics make sense: bus owners charge the vehicles during the lowest-cost periods so they can allocate excess battery power to be sold back into the grid when it is at its highest economic value.
There are many applications to take stored power in EV batteries and use as a supply, such as Ford pitching its F-150 Lightning EV as a home backup power source for when the grid is down and saying that has shown a surprising level of consumer appeal. But the school bus model may be the most effective at the largest scale.
“The low-hanging fruit from what I’ve seen is the school bus model,” Ambatipudi said. It’s not just the cycle of dropping off kids during the morning and then remaining idle at a depot during the middle part of day, and then cycling again in the afternoon and early evening into idle state again. During summer months, the buses are largely idle. “Buses can be used as essentially arbitrage devices to charge when power is cheap and discharge when needed,” he said.
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![Hackers turn Nissan LEAF into full-scale RC car, record drivers' conversations [video]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/05/nissan-leaf-hacked.png?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
A team of white hat European hackers using their brains, keyboards, and a couple of bits and baubles from eBay managed to take control of a 2020 Nissan LEAF and violate just about every privacy and safety regulation in the process.
The best part: they recorded the whole thing.
Budapest-based cybersecurity experts PCAutomotive were able to exploit a number of vulnerabilities in a 2020 Nissan LEAF that enabled the white hat team to geolocate and track the car, record the texts and conversations happening inside the car, playing media back through the car’s speakers, and even (this is the genuinely terrifying dangerous part) turning the steering wheel while the car was moving. (!?)
Maybe the scariest part of this hack, however, is how seemingly easy it was to pull off by starting with a “test bench simulator” built using parts from eBay and exploiting a vulnerability in the LEAF’s DNS C2 channel and Bluetooth protocol.
The PCAutomotive team gave a hugely detailed 118-page presentation of their exploit at black hat Asia 2025, which we’ve included at the bottom of this post, in case the original link goes dead. If you’re into that sort of thing, the fun stuff starts around page 27. And, if you’re not, just know that all the vulnerabilities were disclosed to Nissan and its suppliers between 02AUG2023 and 12SEP2024 (p. 116/118), and the “attack” itself can be seen in the video below that. Enjoy!
Summary of vulnerabilities
- CVE-2025-32056 – Anti-Theft bypass
- CVE-2025-32057 – app_redbend: MiTM attack
- CVE-2025-32058 – v850: Stack Overflow in CBR processing
- CVE-2025-32059 – Stack buffer overflow leading to RCE [0]
- CVE-2025-32060 – Absence of a kernel module signature verification
- CVE-2025-32061 – Stack buffer overflow leading to RCE [1]
- CVE-2025-32062 – Stack buffer overflow leading to RCE [2]
- PCA_NISSAN_009 – Improper traffic filtration between CAN buses
- CVE-2025-32063 – Persistence for Wi-Fi network
- PCA_NISSAN_012 – Persistence through CVE-2017-7932 in HAB of i.MX 6
Remote exploitation of Nissan LEAF
Electrek’s Take
This is one of those posts that, on the bright side, does a great job explaining how a remote operator can “log in” to a vehicle and steer it out of trouble when a weird or edge-case-type situation pops up.
Unfortunately, this is also one of those posts that some of the more clueless anti-EV hysterics will point to and say, “See!? EVs can get hacked!” But the reality is that virtually any car with electric power steering (EPS), electronic throttle controls, brake-by-wire, etc. can be hacked in a similar way. But, while steering a target’s car into an oncoming semi might be a great way to pull off a covert CIA assassination, the more worrying issue here is the breach of privacy and recording – unless you want to spend some time in El Salvadoran prison, I guess.
Remember, kids: Big Brother is watching you.
SOURCE | IMAGES: black hat.
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A major new EV battery factory is being built in Sunderland, bringing 1,000 new jobs with it. AESC, Nissan’s battery partner, is behind the £1 billion ($1.33 billion) plant, which will boost the UK’s EV battery production by six times, enough to power 100,000 electric cars annually.
The 12 GWh capacity plant, AESC’s second battery plant in Sunderland, will be powered by 100% net-zero carbon energy. That big jump in capacity helps position Britain as a global player in EV manufacturing while pushing forward the country’s net-zero goals.
The investment is getting a serious financial lift from the British government. Through a combination of support from the National Wealth Fund and UK Export Finance, the project is unlocking £680 million in financing from major banks, including HSBC, Standard Chartered, SMBC Group, Societe Generale, and BBVA, that covers the construction and operation of the battery factory. Another £320 million is coming from private investment and fresh equity from AESC. On top of all that, the government’s Automotive Transformation Fund is pitching in with £150 million in grant funding.
This deal follows closely on the heels of the new UK-US trade agreement announced a day earlier, which cuts car export tariffs from 27.5% down to 10% for up to 100,000 UK-made vehicles – nearly the total number exported last year. That move could save car companies hundreds of millions of pounds and help protect good-paying jobs in manufacturing hubs like Sunderland.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves visited AESC in Sunderland, where she met with staff and local leaders to discuss what this means for the Northeast and the British car industry.
“This investment follows hot on the heels of yesterday’s landmark economic deal with the US, which will save thousands of jobs in the industry,” Reeves said.
Read more: UK unveils largest curbside EV charger installation of 6,000 ports
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It’s about the future of their jobs. Ford workers at two plants in western Germany are set to go on strike on Wednesday, their works council chief said on Monday.
Ford is facing a worker strike in Germany
In November, Ford announced it would cut around 4,000 jobs in Europe by 2027 as part of a restructuring, primarily in Germany and the UK. That’s still about 14% of its European workforce.
The American automaker said the move comes after it has incurred “significant losses” in recent years and a “highly disruptive market” with new EVs quickly gaining market share.
Ford blamed slower-than-expected demand for electric vehicles and a weak economic situation. It also plans to slow production at its Cologne EV plant, where the electric Explorer and Capri are built.
Last week, IG Metall members voted in favor of “industrial action” with 93.5% of votes in favor of a strike. “Ford must act now—otherwise, we will go through with it,” said Kerstin D. Klein, Chief Representative of IG Metall Cologne-Leverkusen.
Ford is facing an influx of new competition, including Chinese EV makers like BYD. BYD’s overseas sales are surging with a fifth straight month of growth in April.
BYD even outsold Tesla in Germany last month, with 1,566 vehicles registered. In comparison, Tesla had just 855, and Ford saw 9,534 registrations.
On top of this, Ford, like most of the industry, is preparing for more disruption with Trump’s auto tariffs. After releasing Q1 earnings last week, Ford warned that the tariffs could cost up to $2.5 billion this year.
During Ford’s earnings call, CFO Sherry House said that recent EV launches in Europe, including the Explorer, Capri, and Puma Gen-E, helped more than double Model e’s wholesale volume in Q1.
After early success in the US, Ford also launched its “Power Promise” promotion in Europe, offering EV buyers a free home charger and several other perks.
Source: Reuters
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