Clean Transport

World's Fastest High-Speed Train is Now Running in China

Published

December 29, 2009

The world’s fastest high-speed train, averaging 217 mph, was just launched in China. It blows away the competition, but may not be so special for long.

The train will cover a distance of 663 miles (1,068 km) from Wuhan (central China) to Guangzhou (in the south). It will reduce the travel time between these cities from over 6 hours to about 2 hours and 45 minutes.

This is just the beginning, though.

China plans to expand its high-speed rail to 42 lines by 2012! It intends to invest $300 billion by 2020 and buy at least 80 super high-speed trains.

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This new high-speed train, developed by Seimens, Bombardier and Alstom hit 245 mph at its fastest, and averaging 217 mph it is well above the next closest trains (France’s — 172 mph, Japan’s — 151 mph, Germany’s — 144 mph). Fast trains!

The US could definitely benefit from some of those. Bridgette Meinhold of inhabitat states that with a train of that speed “a trip from New York City to Chicago would take a little over 3 1/2 hours.” I think it’s high time for the US to start considering high-speed trains more seriously!

via ecofriend & inhabitat

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Image Credit: Extra Medium via flickr under a Creative Commons license

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In this article:Alstom, China, France, Germany, Guangzhou, Japan, Siemens, train, world, Wuhan

Written By Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.