Large train station on the Siemens Mobility test track: Railway boss Richard Lutz and Siemens boss Roland Busch came personally to Wegberg-Wildenrath in the North Rhine-Westphalian district of Heinsberg this Friday to attend an event that obviously has historical significance for both companies:
The first refueling of a hydrogen train from Siemens, and immediately afterwards the premiere ride. “Today, with our partners, we are taking a decisive step towards the future of climate-neutral transport,” said Busch.
The manufacturer Alstom is not impressed. “Do they even have a declaration of no objection from the TÜV? If something goes wrong, the whole industry will be affected…” whispered one of the French competitor’s hands on the day of the Siemens test drive. As if to steal the show from the German train manufacturer, Alstom is announcing a new hydrogen event for the coming week that borders on mockery.
Alstom can afford to be arrogant on this subject. Because while Siemens is still filling up pre-series types for the first time, the French already have a series product on the track: the “Coradia iLint”. The passenger train is also running on German rails with a hydrogen tank and fuel cell – but not on a test track, but on a regular regional railway line in northern Germany.
After several years of test operation – which Siemens still has ahead of it – the French handed over the first five iLint trains to the Verkehrsbetriebe Elbe-Weser (EVB). By the end of the year, a total of 14 trains should have been delivered from the Salzgitter plant. Two weeks ago, the world’s first start of network operation with hydrogen trains was officially celebrated in Bremervörde, Lower Saxony.
This Friday, Bahn and Siemens want to make up at least a few track meters with their maiden voyage in the race for a future technology, which was unequal from the start. Siemens had been skeptical about the potential of hydrogen in rail mobility for too long.
In other areas of mobility, hopes for hydrogen as a major climate problem solver are gradually being dashed. In aviation, there is less and less talk about hydrogen and instead almost exclusively about SAF, a sustainable kerosene replacement. Fewer and fewer manufacturers are also seriously pursuing projects in hydrogen mobility in the automotive sector. Too many unsolved questions, too much infrastructural effort, too expensive.
But in rail mobility of all places, hydrogen technology now seems to be catching on. It is to be used wherever trains are not powered by overhead lines.
15,000 diesel locomotives are still rolling in Europe, only two thirds of the German railway network are electrified, three quarters are to be. In 18 years, the railway wants to have all combustion engines off the track. Battery-powered trains can only partially close the gap because of their insufficient range, they only manage between 100 and 150 kilometers.
The market for hydrogen trains is emerging in the gap. Siemens Mobility boss Michael Peter estimates it at 100 billion euros. At the end of 2020, Siemens Mobility and Deutsche Bahn presented the “H2goesRail” project to the public, when the competition had long been rolling through the North German lowlands in trial operation.
Six years after Alstom’s pioneering train, Siemens presented its “Mireo Plus H” to the press in Krefeld this spring with much fanfare and smoke machines. This Friday he was finally allowed to drive a few meters under his own power.
According to the manufacturer, a single Mireo train saves up to 45,000 tons of CO2 over a service life of 30 years compared to car journeys. “Hydrogen is part of the mobility of the future. I am therefore very pleased that we have reached the next important milestone in the H2goesRail project today,” praised Deutsche Bahn boss Lutz at the premiere on Friday.
Deutsche Bahn will be carbon neutral by 2040. An important lever is saying goodbye to diesel. “With our development of a mobile hydrogen filling station and the associated maintenance infrastructure, we at Deutsche Bahn are once again showing what outstanding and innovative drive technologies look like and how climate-neutral mobility of tomorrow will work.”
The rivals of the hydrogen train now eye the trains of the respective competitor with suspicion and compare the technical data as in the quartet game. The French have submitted. Top speed: 140 kilometers per hour. Range: 1000 kilometers. Siemens Mobility is now countering this with its “Mireo Plus H”, which, at least in the longer version, should also be able to travel up to 1000 kilometers and even achieve a speed of 160. Siemens wins.
Alstom, however, does not let this sit on itself and is already preparing for the next PR blow. Next Thursday, the French want to organize a strange record run with their hydrogen train. A fully fueled series train borrowed from EVB will then start at six in the morning in Bremervörde and from there travel as far south as the fuel cells can carry it.
The tour goes past the Alstom train works in Salzgitter and on to Hesse, where you can take the opportunity to drop the information that Alstom will deliver 27 hydrogen trains to the Rhein-Main transport association by the end of the year.
The event will be broadcast via live stream. Alstom is thus seamlessly following the historic broadcast of a seven-hour train journey between Bergen and Oslo, which 1.2 million Nordic people watched on Norwegian television 13 years ago.
The Alstom variant promises to be similarly uneventful, but to be even more lengthy. The engineers calculated that the hydrogen train would only come to a halt somewhere in the Mühldorf/Burghausen area around 10 p.m. in the evening. “We drive until the tank is empty,” says an Alstom spokesman. “We’re looking forward to achieving the highest possible mileage, which is well beyond the 1000-kilometer mark.” After that, Siemens is back on Train.
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