Alstom Coradia iLint wins GreenTec Mobility Award

The Coradia iLint will enter regular service on the Cuxhaven-Bremervörde route during 2018.

Alstom's Coradia iLint, the world's first hydrogen fuel cell powered regional passenger train, has won the 2018 GreenTec Award in the Mobility category by Germany-based Schaeffler Group Industrial, a manufacturer of machinery, power transmission and railway, heavy industry and consumer products with facilities around the world.  

Schaeffler presented the award at Alstom’s production site in Salzgitter, Germany, during an advance award ceremony ahead of the GreenTec Awards gala to be held in Munich on May 13.

The Coradia iLint is a 100% emission-free regional train that offers an alternative to diesel trains for operation on non-electrified railway lines, which currently make up more than 40% of the railway network in Germany.

Powered by a fuel cell in which hydrogen is combined with oxygen to produce electrical energy (technology originally developed by NASA in the 1960s for the Gemini and Apollo space programs), the Coradia iLint only emits steam and water condensate. The train will enter regular service on the Cuxhaven-Bremervörde route during 2018.

“With the Coradia iLint, Alstom is the first railway manufacturer in the world to have produced completely emission-free technology ready for series production,” said Jörg Nikutta, Managing Director of Alstom in Germany and Austria. “Indeed, we have achieved more than this: an innovative mobility concept that is sustainable and competitive, and that includes not only the trains and service, but also the infrastructure necessary for fueling them.”

In the presence of GreenTec Awards initiator Sven Krüger, jury members Professor Tim Hosenfeldt, head of Schaeffler’s Centre for Innovation and Dr. Joachim Damasky, Managing Director of the German Association of the Automotive Industry, presented the GreenTec Award certificate to Alstom. Also present at the ceremony were representatives of TÜV NORD and NOW (National Organization for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology), partners of the GreenTec Awards.

“Hydrogen technology shows new ways to CO2-free mobility in a sustainable and de-fossilized energy chain, especially in areas such as railway engineering and heavy goods transport,” said Hosenfeldt. “Alstom impressively puts this into practice with the Coradia iLint”

“Our sector is on the move toward sustainable mobility solutions,” remarked Damasky. The Coradia iLint shows that our possibilities are manifold.”

“Fuel cells are a promising technology for further developing alternative drive systems in rail technology,” added Silvio Konrad, Managing Director at TÜV NORD Systems. “Alstom’s Coradia iLint project is a good fit for forward-looking, green mobility.”