France unveils super-fast train

French engineering giant Alstom unveiled a new super-fast train on Tuesday which it claims will be quicker, cleaner and bigger than its Japanese and German rivals.

President Nicolas Sarkozy helped cut the ribbon on the AGV, which stands for Automotrice Grande Vitesse, or High-Speed Railcar -- a bullet-train with a cruise speed of up to 360 kilometres per hour (210 mph).

The AGV is only 40 kilometres an hour faster than the company's current TGV fast-train but Alstom says it will be to the rail world what the superjumbo Airbus A380 jet is to the skies.

"We wanted this train because we had understood that the ultra high-speed market was going to evolve," Alstom chairman Patrick Kron told some 500 guests gathered at a rail test centre in the Atlantic city of La Rochelle.

"To answer that challenge we had to expand and modernise our offer," he said as he unveiled the sleek black-and-grey train, which shunted forwards in a pool of blue light.

Kron said it marked a "major technological break" wih successive models of TGV, from the 1981 original to the double-decker launched in 1996 -- although he said the TGV and its successor would be complementary.

The AGV's key innovation is a system of motors fitted under each passenger carriage instead of at the front and rear only, which constructors say slashes energy consumption by 15 percent and cuts maintenance costs.

Lighter than the TGV, it is also designed to be 98-percent recyclable.

Sarkozy, who as finance minister intervened in 2004 to save Alstom from being broken up, was guest of honour at its launch along with top rail executives from France, Germany, Russia and Italy.

The president hailed the AGV as proof of the group's "renewal", saying he had been right to prop up the company.

"We need to entrench a simple message in people's minds: industry is not over, industry is essential for the economy of a rich nation as much as an emerging nation," Sarkozy said.

Alstom designed the AGV alone, unlike the TGV which was a joint project with the state rail firm SNCF 27 years ago, aiming for a more spacious interior and greater energy efficiency and targeting the export market.

The AGV's launch comes at a time when "ultra high-speed is entering a phase of expansion," in its core market Europe but also in emerging economies from China to Brazil, Kron said.

The firm will be bidding later this year for the AGV to replace 300 to 400 of the oldest French TGVs, a mammoth SNCF contract that would see the trains go into service on home soil in 2014.
But the French manufacturer has already secured a 1.5-billion-euro (2.2 billion dollar) contract with Italy's new rail operator Nuovo Transporto Viaggiatori (NTV), which plans to put 25 trains in circulation from 2011.

Alstom's AGV beat the Inter-City Express (ICE) of German company Siemens and the Canadian Bombardier's superfast Zefiro for the Italian contract, and German newspapers report Alstom is well-placed to beat Siemens on home turf for a contract with state rail operator Deutsche Bahn.

Pride of French engineering, the current-generation TGV is one of the world's fastest rail services, with high-speed lines criss-crossing France and links to London and Brussels.
A supercharged French TGV smashed the world speed record for a train on rails last year, hurtling into the history books at 574.8 kilometres (357.2 miles) per hour -- close to half the speed of sound.

Japan's Shinkansen "bullet train" and Siemen's ICE train are the other major players in a global fast-train market that has been boosted by environmental concerns about the impact of air transport.

The Shinkansen and the ICE average about 300 kph (185 mph) but a new version of the Japanese train, the Fastech 360Z, is expected to operate at 360 kph (225 mph) when it enters service.