Germany: The result came during testing of a two-car battery-electric Civity-platform train at the Wegberg-Wildenrath test track in Germany. The Spanish manufacturer had previously put the train’s range on lithium-titanate batteries at 65 to 110 km.
The tests also looked at how the traction system performs under extreme operating conditions. CAF says the data will feed into further development of battery-based traction technology. The train itself, classified by German operator Deutsche Bahn as Class 557, will make its public debut at InnoTrans at the end of September.
Battery-electric train from CAF for Germany. Source: CAF
VRR and NWL, transport operators for Germany’s Rhine-Ruhr and Westphalia-Lippe regions, ordered 76 of these two-car low-floor trains from the Spanish manufacturer between 2021 and 2023. The trains are now due to enter service in 2027-2029, two years behind the original schedule.
Worth noting: a prototype Class 230 train, converted by Britain’s Vivarail, is also in the running for the world battery-range record, having covered 320 km on a single charge last year at speeds of up to 64 km/h. The official Guinness World Record, though, currently still belongs to Switzerland’s Stadler, whose FLIRT Akku, running purely on batteries, covered 224 km on one charge in Germany in 2021 at around 0°C.
