From Tracks to Tech: Evolving to InnoTrans 2024

Remember 2018? The start of children skipping school to call for action on climate change, driverless cars were ‘coming soon’, and cities like Venice and Amsterdam began to clamp down on over-tourism. With 5G, extreme weather events with record temperatures and droughts, and the COVID-19 pandemic to follow, how we thought about travel, and how we would travel was changing.

For me, 2018 marked my first full year as CEO at Siemens Mobility , and my first InnoTrans as CEO. InnoTrans 2018 cemented the start of our digitalization strategy where we would have to balance changing trends, events, and leverage new technologies to grow. It has been an enjoyable ride ever since, (part roller coaster, but mainly a smooth high-speed train ride) and a journey that has taken us from largely being known as a train manufacturer and infrastructure company, to a digital, sustainable, and connected mobility provider.

So of course, I am equally (probably more, actually) excited for our biggest customer event of InnoTrans 2024 this September. With an urgent need for sustainable transport and growing demand for rail, we have to go further in accelerating the benefits of rail travel.  

2018-2022: Shaping Connected Mobility to Destination Digital

Jumping back to 2018, we saw how digitalization could fundamentally transform mobility. Our theme at InnoTrans 2018 was Shaping Connected Mobility and we aimed for an “increasingly networked total mobility system”. Looking back, it sounded like we were testing the water, but our plans were very advanced at the time.

In April 2018, we were awarded the contract to digitalize the signaling equipment of the entire Norwegian rail network and shortly before InnoTrans 2018 in September, we opened our new maintenance depot for the Rhine-Ruhr Express in Dortmund-Eving. Digital and paperless rail maintenance depots were unheard of, but its success (earlier in 2024, we invested €150 million to double the size of the facility) and continued growth of Railigent has shown that 100% availability can be achieved through a digital approach to maintenance.

We were also in talks to acquire Padam Mobility to add to our software business – already Hacon had joined in 2017, and Sqills would be acquired in 2021. This was one way to increase access to information, provide a better passenger experience, and include first/last mile transportation options in our offering.

If all that was not enough to talk about at Messe Berlin that year, we also were progressing with interlocking in the cloud, and our platform approach with the Mireo regional trains, our Vectron locomotive, and a concept for the Velaro Novo high-speed train. All of this was formed from our four levers: Lifecycle costs optimized for rail infrastructure and rolling stock, 100% system availability, Maximized network capacity, and Optimized customer experience and processes.

With our strategy and our focus on digitalization, we made great progress to the next InnoTrans and laid the foundation for the launch of Siemens Xcelerator at InnoTrans 2022. Here we promised to bring connectivity to the next level by making software more modular, using standardized Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and moving software modules into the cloud.

This helps our customers to reduce complexities by bringing all their assets into one ecosystem, and it gives passengers transparency from the first to last mile. Another advantage is that all the data made accessible via APIs form the perfect basis for solutions using AI. We had gone from Shaping Connected Mobility to Destination Digital, and now in 2024 to Transform mobility for everyone!

2024 InnoTrans: The Ecosystem Comes Together

What to expect from us at InnoTrans 2024? We will show the progress we have made on our three Siemens Xcelerator promises in 2022. The centerpiece will focus on how APIs bring real customer and passenger benefits. We will show how information from anywhere in the rail ecosystem, made available in a secure and standardized way via APIs, can create additional value in another of our systems, applications, or software modules.

APIs serve as bridge, where information or data from one element in the rail ecosystem, for example live timetable updates, can be requested by another application, such as your ticketing app. Here, passengers get live updates and can plan their journey accordingly, while operators have better transparency of bookings and can improve occupancy thanks to Mobility Software Suite X.

Also, real-time battery monitoring with Railigent X is made possible by relying on APIs. Here you can for example calculate the remaining running range based on the live battery charge levels and energy usage to adapt the train schedule. These are just two examples; the potential reaches every area of mobility and you will get to see many live examples of this in action at our centerpiece.  You already know our Siemens Xcelerator portfolio with Railigent X and Mobility Software Suite X, you will have to wait until InnoTrans to see some very exciting news in this area 😉.

Overall from Siemens Mobility at InnoTrans 2024, you will see how we have become more connected and more sustainable in every area. And how by providing 100% availability, maximized network capacity, and optimized customer experience and processes leading to 100% occupancy, we will unleash additional digitally-enabled rail capacity – sustainably and with lifecycle costs optimized!

Join the ride at InnoTrans 2024

All aboard to InnoTrans 2024! See you at Hub27 from 24th to 27th September in Berlin. Get ready to see how we are combining the real and digital worlds to Transform mobility for everyone!