GERMANY: Rail and coach group Flix has awarded Talgo a €2·4bn framework contract for the supply of up to 65 Talgo 230 push-pull trainsets, saying it aims ‘to make sustainable, affordable, high speed travel more accessible across Germany and beyond’.
There is an initial €1·06bn firm order for Talgo to supply 30 sets of coaches and provide 15 years of maintenance. The vehicles will be owned by Flixtrain, financed with a mixture of equity and debt arranged by Unicredit and Deutsche Bank. FlixTrain will lease Siemens Mobility Vectron locomotives to work with the Talgo trains.
‘We are pursuing a long-term strategy with FlixTrain and we will significantly expand our services in the coming years’, said Flix co-founder and CEO André Schwämmlein when the order was announced on May 27. ‘With the tremendous expansion of our train fleet we will start a new era of train travel in Germany and Europe. We do not only plan to increase our market share, but also to increase the market itself significantly.’
Talgo 230
Talgo was selected through an open competitive process. The 230 km/h trainsets will be similar to Talgo 230 sets ordered by Denmark’s DSB and by Germany’s Deutsche Bahn, which brands its fleet as ICE L. They will have Talgo’s distinctive lightweight vehicles with independently rotating, self-guided wheelsets. Each trainset will comprise a driving car, a variable number of intermediate high-capacity seating coaches, including one for passengers with reduced mobility, and an end-coach interfacing with the locomotive. FlixTrain said they will offer greater accessibility than current long-distance trains in Germany.
Maintenance will be supported by automated sensors remotely transmitting up to 2 GB of plain text per train per day for analysis by AI models.
‘Talgo 230 is the best solution to improve passenger mobility across Europe in the inter-city rail passenger market and we are delighted that our company is contributing with this new product iteration to the common goal of shifting traffic from the road and air modes and to a fair and rapid energy transition’, said Talgo President Carlos Palacio.
FlixTrain told Railway Gazette International that the delivery timeline will be announced in the future.
‘Enormous market potential’
FlixTrain said there was ‘enormous market potential in Germany and Europe’. It expects the high-speed rail market in Germany to grow by 45% from 2021 volumes by 2030, and across Europe ‘the market potential is even greater’ at €27bn in 2023 with an expected annual growth of 4% to 5%.
‘We see FlixTrain as a European product. Starting from our home market, we want to make the service also available in other countries’, said Schwämmlein.
Flix currently offers coach and rail travel in more than 40 countries through its FlixBus, FlixTrain, Kamil Koç and Greyhound brands, using a asset-light business model where it manages the commercial side including network planning, pricing, operations control, marketing and sales, quality management and product development. Partner companies are then responsible for daily operations. FlixTrain directly connects around 50 cities in Germany, using a fleet of 135 former DB Interregio cars which have been modernised and the number of seats per car increased from 60 to 100.
In 2024 FlixTrain expanded its offer by 40%. It said the new German government has acknowledged the ‘immense potential’ of long-distance rail by committing to long term investments in infrastructure and a reform of the track access system. The operator said this ‘can unlock further private investment in Germany’s rail sector, fostering innovation for a broader range of services’, which can ‘lead to more competition and a better offer for customers’.
Commenting on the order, Germany’s recently appointed Federal Minister of Transport Patrick Schnieder said ‘the fact that a German tech company is investing on this scale is a strong signal for the rail market.’
