Karlsruhe Transport (VBK) and AVG placed a €75m order for 25 vehicles in October 2011, all of which are now in service. An initial option for 25 extra vehicles was exercised last year and production of second batch is now underway, with the 26th vehicle due for delivery in the near future.
The third tranche will be delivered in autumn 2017 and will operate on lines S1 (Hochstetten – Bad Herrenalb) and S11 (Hochstetten – Ittersbach).
Stadler Rail Valencia is assembling the tram-trains at its Albuixech plant near Valencia, Spain, while Vossloh Kiepe is supplying electrical equipment, traction systems, vehicle control systems, heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, passenger information systems, and CCTV.
The 80km/h, 37.2m-long NET 2012 is 2.65m wide with a boarding height of 340mm and accommodate up to 224 passengers, 104 of them seated.
The NET 2012 is equipped with IGBT inverters and to meet the high redundancy requirements specified by VBK and AVG, each of the four 125kW four-phase asynchronous traction motors is supplied by its own inverter.
The NET 2012s will operate over the main line network on tram-train lines
