CRRC Changchun Railway Vehicles Co, a subsidiary of China Railway Rolling Stock Corp, will test the country’s first hybrid-power train next month, project officials said on May 5.

The train will complete its technical debugging phase by the end of this month in Jilin province and tests are scheduled to start at the China Academy of Railway Sciences in June, which will take six months to ensure product quality, safety and efficiency.

The new model will have between two and three power sources including integrated internal combustion power of diesel generator package and a power battery pack to cut carbon emissions and diesel costs.

An Zhongyi, CRRC Changchun’s general manager, said the train will give the country the edge in shifting from operating electrified railway networks to fully non-electrified ones, a move that favors the development of hybrid-powered trains.

China’s railway trade opportunities come from surging demand in many countries such as the United States, Russia, Brazil, Thailand, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran for improved equipment, infrastructure facilities, passenger services and regional connectivity, with efficiency and green credentials a priority.

The new train will run at between 120 and 160 kilometers per hour, and is best-suited to be operated on lines of under 100 km in length, or on rail journeys of less than an hour.

“The design team has already tackled technical issues such as weight control, noise and vibration,” said Li Xuefei, the project’s chief engineer at CRRC Changchun.

Li said the train is powered using either a pantograph system, an apparatus mounted on its roof which gathers power through contact with an overhead wire, or an internal combustion power pack or power battery pack, to run if a power grid is unavailable.

China is expected to continue a relatively large scale of railway investment over the next five years.

It will speed up the expansion of its high-speed railway network, build more inter-city and city-suburb links, and work to complete a freight railway network, according to the country’s long-term railway development plan.

Hybrid-power trains can be used on commuter lines between various cities, trunk railways and railway lines for passenger traffic along with fast-growing pace of urbanization.