Question: Why no Chinese Rolling Stock?

[prasa]

I see from visits (living across the water) to the UK that most of the new bus fleets are being imported from China, with impressive performance and speed to replace vehicles, each time I visit.

I also believe there is no longer any rolling stock manufacturers that are British owned or controlled, with Hitachi, CAF, Stradler and Alstom being the main manufacturers - with much of the design and heavy engineering work imported, and often subject to long delays / defects. So I just wondered why there is no Chinese rolling stock being imported, or considered (at least as far as I know) for the UK railways - given I imagine would be a far quicker build time/implementation window than what we've seen from the more Western/closer to home builders?

If it's about preserving local jobs, could a Chinese rolling stock manufacturer purchase an idle facility or argue that more trains able to operationally run= more long term jobs with TOCs.

I just wanted to see if there is something I missing here? Perhaps ROSCOs don't wish to finance purchases from untested suppliers ? Just seems strange to have so many trains on there last legs and poor execution of new fleet rollouts, but not to try something different.

 

[Zomboid]

There was a Chinese company interested in bidding for what became the 800 series, though I don't know if they actually did in the end. And obviously they didn't win the contact.

I'm not aware of any meaningful presence of Chinese rolling stock in Europe, so maybe they're just not trying so much at the moment. The Chinese government is funding railways in Africa, and with their own expansion there's probably plenty of work to keep their factories busy for now.

 

[Snow1964]

I'm not aware of any meaningful presence of Chinese rolling stock in Europe, so maybe they're just not trying so much at the moment. The Chinese government is funding railways in Africa, and with their own expansion there's probably plenty of work to keep their factories busy for now.

I think there are some double deck EMUs with open access operator in Austria, and a small number of EMUs in Serbia.

But yes, not much at all (so far)

There were bidding for Lisbon Metro, but some sort of EU percentage requirement ended that. So possibly cannot currently meet EU local content rules.

A couple of days ago an order for metro in Brazil was announced

 

[anthony263]

Grand union were looking at ordering Chinese rolling stock

 

[bangor-toad]

Back in 2007 / 2008 there was a company called CSRE who had a product line called Polaris. The company MD was a registered user here withe the username Kingfisher200262

The company seemed to have been an option for Grand Central.

There was a Rail forums chat in 2019 about them; Link.

Of course it never happened. Use the search function & you'll find quite a few rather negative comments about various aspects of the attempt.
As far as I know there hasn't been a more recent effort by a Chinese manufacturer to break into the UK market

Cheers
Mr Toad

 

[JonathanH]

I see from visits (living across the water) to the UK that most of the new bus fleets are being imported from China, with impressive performance and speed to replace vehicles, each time I visit.

I don't think a position has been reached that "most of the new bus fleets" are being imported from China, but they are certainly large numbers of Chinese sourced buses now going into service, with some finishing work undertaken in the UK.

In another thread about the cost of living, someone wisely posted:

My take on this is that there is plenty of demand in the economy; what we are short of is the home produced supply side. This means that too much money goes abroad rather than improving employment and reducing (foreign) debt.

As a country, we really do need to watch what we do with importing goods. A lot of things are long gone and China seems the only source, because their products are cheaper. We have to generate wealth to pay for imports, which we have achieved by selling off UK assets and production but there aren't so many left now to continue to sell.

If it's about preserving local jobs, could a Chinese rolling stock manufacturer purchase an idle facility or argue that more trains able to operationally run= more long term jobs with TOCs.

It goes further than preserving local jobs though. Where we buy imports that money goes out of our economy. It also affects the supply chain if there are fewer British made parts.

I just wanted to see if there is something I missing here? Perhaps ROSCOs don't wish to finance purchases from untested suppliers ? Just seems strange to have so many trains on there last legs and poor execution of new fleet rollouts, but not to try something different.

The product has to be viable. There is no guarantee that a Chinese designed product is going to be better and work more effectively than a product from a supplier already in the market.

I also believe there is no longer any rolling stock manufacturers that are British owned or controlled, with Hitachi, CAF, Stradler and Alstom being the main manufacturers - with much of the design and heavy engineering work imported, and often subject to long delays / defects. So I just wondered why there is no Chinese rolling stock being imported, or considered (at least as far as I know) for the UK railways - given I imagine would be a far quicker build time/implementation window than what we've seen from the more Western/closer to home builders?

That may be true, but the products of the companies you have listed still involve parts of the UK supply chain and assembly.

 

[RUK]

Alstom

Alstom still design in Derby, for example the new Adessia UK, which seems to be based on the Bombardier Aventra which they acquired from Derby.