Innovation: the engine of our growth
Innovation is part of our Alstom in Motion 2025 strategy. It is what has brought us to where we are today, and we want to go even further. With its new scale and expertise, Alstom has doubled its innovation capacity and will support this growth by doubling financial investments in R&D, up to €600 million (CAD 875 million) per year by 2024.
For a long time now, Alstom has demonstrated leadership in intelligent and green mobility. This leadership has been validated by our customers who choose solutions such as the Coradia iLint, a hydrogen train, or our driverless automated metro solutions managed by reliable, high-performance digital signalling. But the mobility of the future must also meet the needs of all passengers, whatever their situation. It must also offer a healthy environment, whether for our customers, the operators, or their customers, the passengers. Here is how Alstom envisions its innovation roadmap to deliver the mobility of the future today.
Green mobility, smart mobility and more inclusive, healthier mobility
We anticipate and respond to our customers’ needs. Today, that means we must create solutions for tomorrow that are green, smart, inclusive and healthy, and these three major innovation priorities go beyond product innovation alone.
Green mobility: bringing society toward a low-carbon future
Green mobility is firmly embedded in Alstom’s strategy, with innovations across all product lines for green traction, energy management and eco-design. To make mobility even greener, we examine the full value chain of rail mobility to identify improvements that can be made.
This involves new solutions and new business models for mobility systems complementary to existing product lines, and supporting regions and customers with end-to-end analysis and system optimization.
Photo credit: ALSTOM / Christoph Busse
The Coradia iLint is the world’s first passenger train powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, which produces electrical energy for traction. This “zero-emission” train is quiet and emits only water vapor and condensed water. The Coradia iLint™ stands out through its combination of innovative elements: clean energy conversion, flexible energy storage in batteries and intelligent management of traction and available energy. Designed specifically for non-electrified lines, it enables clean and sustainable operation while guaranteeing excellent levels of performance.
Smart mobility: efficient mobility for operators and passengers
The Mobility Data Innovation team
At the heart of smart mobility are data: capturing them, interpreting them and acting on the information they provide. Thanks to the expertise of 200 experts in data architecture, data science and computer vision, Alstom’s Mobility Data Innovation team is a catalyst for our smart solutions.
Covering a range of end-to-end solutions in operations, maintenance, safety, urban flow and digital twin, our mobility data platform is an excellent example of Alstom innovation in action. This platform allows us to manage the flow of data across our onboard and wayside installed base, and also enables integration into the wider mobility ecosystem. Data innovations such as Mastria help us support our customers with passenger flow and multimodal orchestration, two increasingly important challenges in a post-pandemic world.
Autonomous mobility
While mass rail transport has for some time benefited from driverless operation based on signalling, advanced safety technologies in perception, obstacle detection, artificial intelligence (AI) and more make progress toward autonomous mobility for road vehicles possible. This is an active area of exploration for Alstom, with a partnership with EasyMile for autonomous shuttles. Building on its expertise in rail safety, Alstom supports autonomous road mobility through digital V2X technologies that allow the vehicle to communicate with infrastructure such as a traffic light or a pedestrian crossing. We are actively developing digital tools to increase autonomy and enable broader deployment in this market.
In the rail domain, we have different solutions, ranging from driving assistance from the marshalling yard to the mainline, for example, to digital technology that enables full autonomy as “the eyes of the best driver.” Our goal is to deploy autonomous passenger trains as well as autonomous freight trains for testing over the coming years and to enter commercial service by 2025.
Inclusive mobility and healthier mobility (Healthier Mobility™)
Alstom seeks to create mobility solutions that everyone will enjoy using.
Inclusive mobility
Mobility is a fundamental right and transport systems must be accessible to all. Public transport must be inclusive and accessible to all passengers. Innovation in this area means enabling every passenger to board and alight train cars without difficulty, whether using a wheelchair, a bicycle or a stroller. It also means making sure every passenger feels welcome on board at all times thanks to priority seating, visual and audio information and measures planned for emergencies.
Inclusive mobility is at the heart of Alstom’s mobility strategy, which is why we seek innovative solutions to meet the needs of every passenger on every journey.
Healthier mobility (Healthier Mobility™)
Healthier Mobility™ is an area where Alstom is very advanced, with available solutions in cleaning and disinfection, surface treatment and air treatment.
We are exploring a range of innovations such as:
- disinfection by nebulization;
- new tools for contactless passenger flow;
- chemical-free cleaning;
- non-mutagenic, bacteria-resistant coatings.
Like smart, green and inclusive mobility, Healthier Mobility™ is a constantly evolving area, conducive to innovation, that enables Alstom to move the world toward sustainable development.
This partner content was produced as part of the Impulsion MTL 2021 event – The International Forum on Fleet Management.
