China Plans 48,000 Kilometers Of High Speed Rail By 2030 – CleanTechnica

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China is a world leader in many things — electric vehicles, solar power, and cyberattacks on other nations. It also has the most extensive railway network, with 162,000 kilometers (100,000+ miles) installed and plans to add another 38,000 km by 2030. As part of its rail network, it currently has 48,000 km of high-speed rail lines and plans to add another 12,000 km by 2030. According to China Daily, China expects to have the world’s fastest and most modern railway network, which will make travel between major cities possible in just 1 to 3 hours. It will also support efficient cargo transportation all across the nation.

At the moment, the fastest train in China is the CR400, which has a top speed of 400 km/h (250 mph), but at the end of 2024, CRRC Changchun Railway Vehicles and CRRC Sifang unveiled the first prototype of the CR450, which, as the name implies, has a top speed of 450 km/h (280 mph). That will make it the fastest train on the planet. China’s high-speed trains are known as Fuxing, which means “rejuvenation.” CNN says the prototype has been hailed by its developers for its excellence in operational speed, energy efficiency, noise control, and braking performance. It has undergone more than 3,000 simulations and over 2,000 platform tests to meet the rigorous demands of commercial operation. Further line tests and refinements will be needed to ensure it meets all necessary standards for commercial operations, the China State Railway Group said.

High-Speed Rail And The CR450

China Daily adds that the CR450’s speed advantage comes from a number of improved features, such as a braking system with a shorter response time, which is critical for the safety of high-speed trains. After a series of trials and calculations, engineers have improved the CR450’s braking response time from an initial 2.3 seconds to about 1.7 seconds. The CR450 has carbon fiber composite materials to reduce its overall weight, which not only helps in enhancing speed but also significantly aids in lowering energy consumption.

Readers may wonder about the elongated nose on the CR450 prototype. According to a thread on Reddit, it is designed to reduce the booming that is common with high-speed trains when they enter tunnels. According to Redditeer Brandino144, who seems to know what he is talking about, “tunnel booms are created when a train first enters a tunnel and the air in the first few hundred meters of the tunnel gets rapidly compressed by the train. In Germany, the latest HSR tunnel designs have elongated portals with holes in the side for the air to escape so it doesn’t get rapidly compressed. This more gradual air pressure transition into the tunnel avoids the tunnel boom even with HSR trainsets with shorter noses.”

Then there is the following interesting discussion, which has implications for battery, solar, and electric vehicle technology. A person on Reddit asked how much of the design of the CR450 is related to trains previously supplied by Siemens. Once again, Brandino144 has a clear and cogent answer:

“You’re always going to get pushback on this because CRRC has marketed its last two fastest trainsets as 100% domestic technology which kind of checks out. The history of the modern era of HSR in the country helps explain it. China’s HSR program really ramped up while relying on over 700 Siemens Velaro trainsets operating across the country, which were mostly domestically produced with technology transfers from Siemens. There were other international technology transfers, but the Chinese version of the Siemens Velaro by far saw the largest number of trainsets produced and operated.

“Since then, Chinese trainset designers (whose industry and expertise got seriously kickstarted with foreign technology transfers) have been busy rolling out the Fuxing line of domestic trainsets. They aren’t copy-pasting Siemens designs, but they learned a lot from the technology transfer so some parts like the cab interior, exterior doors, and even the bogies of the CR400AF trainsets are stated as domestically designed but are also heavily inspired by their experience with Velaro trainsets, so sometimes they look and operate very similar for a good reason. Having an honest conversation about the remaining heavy influence of the Hexie technology transfers runs counter to CRRC marketing and some level of nationalism behind those marketing claims so it’s not going to happen here.”

Could Technology Transfer Be A Two-Way Street?

That’s interesting information. We know that much of solar panel and lithium battery technology originated in the US, which pooh poohed it, as was demonstrated when Ronald Reagan had the solar panels Jimmy Carter had installed on the roof of the White House ripped off and thrown in the trash. By the same token, lithium-ion batteries got a collective ho hum from the American government and US industry. But China saw the opportunities both made possible and embraced them with open arms. It then paid for applied research to make them commercially viable, and the rest is history.

China originally required foreign manufacturers to partner with domestic corporations if they wanted to produce products, like automobiles, in China. The results of that policy are manifest today. Everyone accuses China of distorting international trade with humongous government subsidies, but in a sense, they have only done what other nations — particularly the US — should have done but chose not to. The difference is largely cultural. China has been doing business with the world for centuries. The US has been doing business with the world for decades. China thinks in terms of decades, the US thinks in terms of the next quarterly report.

Solar panels? What’s the payback on investing in them? Decades? Fuhgeddabowdit. Same with batteries. Few people know that one of the first hybrid cars was created by Exxon after the OPEC embargoes in the 1970s. But once the oil started flowing again, Exxon terminated the project and gave the prototype to Toyota. Can you say “Prius,” boys and girls? Yeah, we knew you could.

The impact of China’s high-speed rail is not so much about getting people from place to place quickly as it is about reducing the amount of fossil fuel it takes to get them there. Who wants to fight traffic to get to JFK or LAX to suffer flight delays and hours of traffic on the other end when you can hop on a high-speed train and be in a city 700 miles away in less than 3 hours? No airplane, no jet fuel, and no carbon emission injected into the atmosphere at 35,000 feet. China’s Fuxing trains are powered by electricity, which in China often comes from enormous solar farms instead of coal-powered thermal generating stations. China does still have plenty of those, but it is phasing them out faster than any other country.

Readers may choose to focus on how transfer of technology made China a manufacturing powerhouse and consider what might happen if its advanced electric car technology was embraced by the US and the EU instead of discouraged by high tariff barriers. What if they took a page from the Chinese playbook and allowed BYD and other Chinese car companies to sell cars that were manufactured locally with domestic parts and materials? Think of it as technology transfer in reverse. China is not without its faults. Ask the democracy advocates in Hong Kong about that. But in the world of technology, it is clearly in the lead and pulling away. That should be a concern for so-called “first world” nations.