Back to the here and now. The integration of Bombardier into Alstom will have various consequences for the products here in Europe. There are products such as Bombardier’s TRAXX locomotives and Alstom’s high speed trains that have no serious counterpart within the new company. But other types of trains will be discontinued – also because Poupart-Lafarge
offered them as change to the EC to get green light for the main deal. It is the end of the Bombardier Talent range, no more Alstom Coradia Polyvalents and also the Zefiro V300 product line will be discontinued.
These changes offer great opportunities for other manufacturers to step into new markets and according to the latest rumours, Škoda Transportation is going to be the company that will bring new competition to the French and German markets. The Czech company is the preferred bidder for both the (problematic) Talent and the (local) Polyvalent product ranges – which both come including their building locations, Bombardier’s Hennigsdorf site and Alstom’s Reichshoffen factory respectively. For Škoda, the market entrance, and access to new customers, will be more important than the actual trains.
For us, a time has come to get used to Alstom names in combination with Bombardier products. Especially Alstom + TRAXX just feels weird, after twenty years of reporting. But, the world moves on and so will we.
We just hope that the Alstom take-over will bring new energy, more innovation, and fresh money, to various Bombardier projects. The rail market needs healthy and ambitious manufacturers, there is no time waste. We need ‘the modal shift’ – and rail travel should become ‘mobility by nature’ – but so far, it has not happened.
