USA: The two largest American locomotive manufacturers announced they have reached a settlement.
Their joint statement says that the prospect of additional litigation is not in their interest. Progress Rail relinquishes its claims against Wabtec, and both companies admit that they have been and remain suppliers of freight locomotives and components in the railway car-building market.
In the lawsuit filed against Wabtec in autumn 2023, Progress Rail claimed to force Wabtec to sell the General Electric assets acquired for $11 bln in 2019. At that time, Wabtec took over the locomotive manufacturing facilities in Erie and Fort Worth, as well as the diesel engine plant in Grove City, USA. Progress Rail alleged that Wabtec was abusing its leading market position in the supply of mainline locomotives and related control systems and services.
Progress Rail asserted that Wabtec had supplied 71% of all mainline diesel locomotives in North America over 10 years and almost 90% of the US market locomotives meeting the Tier IV emission regulations (according to the estimates previously revealed by Railway Age, a total of 1,200 such locomotives had been produced since 2015). In addition, Progress Rail claims that its rival is also the dominant supplier of various locomotive control equipment, such as the PTC safety technology, Trip Optimizer cruise-control system for trains, and the Locotrol distributed power system, with Wabtec’s market share reaching from 79 to 100%.
In response, Wabtec argued that the lawsuit was “an unsupported attack on the merger of Wabtec and GE Transportation”, because Progress Rail was actively controlling that acquisition.
