Railway Gazette reported that Trenitalia has selected a joint bid from Bombardier Transportation and AnsaldoBreda for a contract to supply 50 high speed train sets.

The board met on August 5th 2010 to approve the order, which should see a prototype completed within 300 days and entry into service by 2013. As well as getting a higher technical score than Alstom's rival submission, the joint bid came in cheaper at EUR 30.8 million rather than EUR 35 million per eight car trainset.

Mr Mauro Moretti CEO of FS Group said that "A good race ended with high scores by both competitors. This shows that there are various ways to buy trains: go to the dealer and buy sight unseen, or, as we did, strongly support innovation."

Derived from Bombardier's Zefiro platform as supplied to China but heavily adapted to meet European TSIs, the 200 meters long non articulated trains will have distributed traction and be suitable for running at up to 400 kilometers per hour, although the planned maximum speed in revenue service will be 360 kilometers per hour.

(Sourced from www.railwaygazette.com)