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Railways has tasked the state-owned Integral Coach Factory (ICF) with locally producing two standard-gauge bullet trains this fiscal year after talks with Japanese suppliers became deadlocked over price, according to insiders.
India will produce trains with a top speed of 250 kilometres per hour (kmph) for the first time. These two trains are anticipated to operate on the ₹1.08 lakh crore Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail route.
The trains would most likely be constructed on the Vande Bharat platform. Although utilising an already-existing platform would shorten the time needed for ICF to roll out the trainsets, experts noted that supplying those within the current fiscal year itself would be challenging.
"ICF, Chennai has been tasked to build and deliver two standard-gauge trainsets of eight cars, each featuring a steel car body, and a running speed of 220 kmph and a maximum speed of 250 kmph," a senior official aware of the move told ET. An order for the trains was issued earlier this week, he added. Officials said talks with a consortium of Japanese rolling stock suppliers - Hitachi and Kawasaki - have been going on for long but had made little headway.
"Negotiations are still underway. We expect the Japanese to stick closer to our cost estimates for the supply of bullet train rolling stock," a second official said. It will take suppliers around three years from the date of award to honour the contract terms, the official added.
The cost of a 10-coach bullet train was estimated at ₹389 crore in 2018. Each train was supposed to attain cruising speeds of over 300 kmph. In 2023, the estimated supply cost was revised to ₹460 crore per trainset.
While the Japanese consortium had expressed willingness to supply the 'Shinkansen' trainsets, the Indian Railways was still not convinced of the price they were being offered. The original plan involved sourcing trainsets from Japanese companies, as the Japan International Cooperation Agency had provided ₹59,396 crore to build the bullet train project. Indian and Japanese suppliers were prioritised in procurement tenders for this project.
The project has been significantly delayed from its original completion deadline of 2022, mainly on account of land acquisition hurdles in Maharashtra. Experts say that for ICF supply within the timeline set by the Indian Railways to develop the trains which can run at 250 kmph will be an uphill task.
According to Sudhanshu Mani, a retired Indian Railways official, who is credited with developing the first variant of the Vande Bharat trains, the current top speed of Vande Bharat trains is only 180 kmph.
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