The statements in this article are based on reliable sources and are repeated at the end of this article
High-speed rail, as a common means of transportation today, is also quite complex in terms of technical difficulty, and only a few countries in the world can master, and the technology of the mainland is in the forefront.
However, for our neighbor India, they seem to be very unimpressed, and directly say that they can build high-speed rail without relying on China, and then they found that some technologies are really not good without looking for China, such as the wheels of high-speed rail. [Listen to the song]
01 high-speed rail wheels
If you just look at these wheels, they may seem very special, but they contain a lot of technology and requirements.
Take the mainland's high-speed rail as an example: the usual speed is 250-350 kilometers per hour, and a carriage can reach about 50-60 tons.
At the same time, the high-speed rail is running on the rails, which also makes there will be a lot of friction between the wheels and the rails, which may produce high temperatures of up to thousands of degrees, which is naturally very harmful to the wheels.
Previously, there was a major traffic accident in Germany in 1988: the ICE-1 train finally broke due to metal fatigue inside the wheel steel rim during the process of driving at a high altitude, resulting in a direct derailment of the high-speed train, and 101 people died.
On the other hand, the high-speed rail does not always run in a straight line, and there will naturally be turns in the middle, and such a fast driving will also have a higher pressure when encountering turns.
It can be seen that the wheels of high-speed rail are not simply directly used in terms of materials, but need to be able to withstand ultra-high friction, carry huge weight and ultra-high speed, and cope with various possible situations.
Therefore, the material requirements for high-speed rail wheels have become extremely high, basically in the range of millimeters, and the nitrogen content cannot exceed 0.0002%, so as to ensure the cleanliness of the steel used in the wheels and ensure that there will be no problems due to impurities.
It is precisely because of its complexity that there are only a few that can make high-speed rail materials, and those that can be made into wheels are probably only China, Japan, and Germany, and the relevant technologies and experiments are also kept secret, so India's high-speed rail dream is almost over before it has begun.
After all, if they want to admit that China is involved in their high-speed rail, isn't that a slap in the face? However, this face really has to be beaten, because the mainland's technology has already played a pivotal role on the world stage.
02Break through obstacles
In fact, when the mainland first invested in the development of high-speed rail, wheels and other countries actually relied on imports from Japan and Germany, because the technology at that time really could not be compared.
This has led to the fact that even though the proportion of high-speed rail in the mainland is already very high, there are still people who ridicule that "they have not mastered the most core technology" and "without imports from Germany and Japan, it is just a bunch of rags".
As a result, the high-speed rail wheels became "another pearl in the industrial crown" at that time, and this did become a heart disease of the mainland, after all, what they said was indeed not wrong, and the mainland's technology at that time was really not good.
Without core technology, it means that it will become a "fish on the chopping board" of foreign capital, and when the mainland found the tires that Germany needed to import, they directly opened their mouths, and then they were repeatedly threatened by Japan and Germany on the grounds that they did not export.
At the same time, as a country with a very wide geographical area, the mainland has laid a large number of high-speed rail networks to ensure the efficient travel of countless people, while the mainland in the period of immature technology can only pay a large amount of money every year to buy.
In such a situation, the mainland is constantly looking for technological breakthroughs, from domestic research and development, to foreign countries to absorb related technologies, and finally made a very huge breakthrough.
In 2013, the D1 wheels developed by Continental were successfully tested on the CJ1 EMU, and in 2015, the domestic D2 wheels were successfully developed, breaking through the technical barrier of 350 km/h, and assembled in the "Blue Dolphin" and "Golden Phoenix" EMUs, realizing the localization of high-speed rail wheels.
In 2016, the Fuxing EMU was also equipped with domestic wheels, which brought the technological breakthrough of the mainland high-speed rail to a new level, and at the same time as the breakthrough of domestic wheel technology, the price is also falling sharply.
Previously, high-profile foreign companies began to notice that the signs were wrong, and gradually bowed their heads in the hope that they could reduce the price to export wheels, because no country can need so many wheels and provide such a large market like the mainland.
Therefore, there are still many EMUs in the mainland that continue to use wheels exported from abroad, and some of them use domestic wheels, the proportion is about 50%, and this proportion will continue to increase in the future.
At the same time, the mainland is also further opening up the overseas market, exporting to Japan, Germany, South Korea and other places, and gradually began to expand the overseas market, in 2018, the mainland accounted for the world's first industry and sales volume in the global rail transit wheelset market.
Therefore, for India, if it wants to obtain high-quality and low-cost high-speed rail products, it does need to come to the mainland for export, but this is still a bit of a "slap in the face" for them.
03 India High Speed Rail
In fact, India is really reluctant to import the mainland if it is not necessary, after all, in their eyes, they and China are already clear competitors, and they can't say that the other side can't do it themselves, but they really can't say that they can't do it in terms of high-speed rail.
In fact, the development of railways in India was earlier than that of the mainland, and the construction of railways began in the British colonial period, and it had the first train in Asia, and it has been developing continuously in modern times.
However, although it started early, the development was very slow, and there were often funny scenes of "the train was full of people" in the past, and this high-speed rail incident is also very funny.
In 2015, India officially announced that it would build its own high-speed railway, when China, Japan, and Germany bid at the same time, and all three parties were also lowering prices, and finally China and Germany had to "reluctantly" give up to Japan.
Later, Japan found out that they may have been "pitted", because at this time, Japan just wanted to show that it was still not weak in technology, but completely ignoring the final price was equivalent to "giving it away for nothing".
But since they took the order, they had to finish it with gritted teeth, and then they found out that working in India, let alone making money, it would be good if they didn't lose money, and the whole country in India was crazy to make money, and the residents along the road also refused to demolish and relocate, unless they added money.
So India's high-speed rail was delayed until 2018, and then it also encountered the new crown, imported Ukrainian wheels, and was forced to cancel because of the outbreak of the conflict, and the one who signed the agreement with Modi at the beginning was also directly "open-minded".
So it has not been officially opened until now, and the latest news is expected to be in 2026, so it will be ten years before this high-speed rail is calculated.
At the same time, they also posted a video on the Internet to show the smooth operation of their high-speed rail, and later it was revealed that it was directly played at double speed, and the real speed is probably only 160 kilometers per hour, which is less than half of the normal high-speed rail.
Therefore, sometimes we really can't think of all countries as China, and like India, only the whole body is hard-mouthed, and in the end, don't we still have to honestly increase the price of imports to the mainland? But this may also show that domestic wheels have really made a breakthrough and have really gone to the world.
Sources of information:
[1] Xinhua News Agency New Media 2024.01.18: "See" at the beginning of the year|See China's high-speed rail
[2] Global Times 2022.07.25: Ukrainian companies are unable to fulfill their obligations, and the wheels of India's fastest domestic train are purchased from China instead
[3] Jiemian News 2024.04.06: India expects the country's first high-speed rail to open around 2026 at the earliest