The maintenance contract, which covers a 30-year period until 2052, guarantees ILSA’s alliance with Hitachi Rail globally, and gives continuity to the agreement for the construction of its trains, dating back to August 2020.
According to Hitachi and ILSA, the new fleet, which will be developed in Italy, will be the fastest, most sustainable, and quietest in Europe. It will be fully serviced in Madrid by a new team of more than 75 employees. The maintenance of the trains will include predictive and corrective activities to ensure the highest levels of reliability, safety, and comfort for passengers.
ILSA will begin operations in the second half of 2022, and will connect Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante, Seville, Malaga, and Cordoba. The fleet is highly efficient thanks to its state-of-the-art aerodynamics, its use of energy-saving technologies and its high performance. It is also made up of 85% recyclable materials and 95% renewable materials. These eco-design principles contribute to ILSA’s commitment to have the most sustainable fleet, and to Hitachi Rail’s decarbonization strategy to reduce its carbon emissions for customers.
Simone Gorini, CEO of ILSA, said, “This maintenance agreement with Hitachi Rail is a vivid example of the long-lasting and valuable relationships that we want to establish with all our stakeholders to create wealth in Spain. The respect for the environment and the principles of sustainability are shared values between both companies and, without a doubt, have been a decisive factor in becoming strategic partners both for the manufacture and the maintenance of our fleet, with which the Spanish high-speed rail network will take a step forward in terms of innovation, sustainability, and multimodality from the second half of 2022 onwards once we start our operations.”
Roberto Vitali, CEO of Hitachi Rail España, added, “Spain is an important country for our operation service and maintenance business: in addition to this full service contract for the ETR 1000 fleet, we have contract for the maintenance of 53 metros in service on the Madrid metro network and for the maintenance of the high-speed line infrastructure from Madrid to Lerida.”
The ILSA fleet, whose first train is already in Spain conducting homologation tests while the second and third units are on their way to Madrid and scheduled to arrive before the end of 2021, is being manufactured by Hitachi Rail and Alstom Group in Hitachi Rail’s factory in Pistoia, Italy.