The order will comprise 70 emus seating up to 280 passengers with an option for 20 additional trains, 20 500-seat emus with an option for 20 more trains, and 40 dmus with at least 130 seats and an option for 20 extra sets.

The bidders include Alstom, a consortium of AnsaldoBreda and CAF, and Bombardier. Alstom has offered its single-deck Coradia Meridian multiple unit, which is already in use in Italy with Trenord on Malpensa Express services. This is a development of the Minuetto regional trains for Trenitalia, 260 of which have been delivered in diesel and electric variants since 2004. AnsaldoBreda and CAF have offered AnsladoBreda's TAF double-deck TSR emu, a type already in operation with Trenitalia, and CAF's single-deck Civity train, while Bombardier presented Polis, which is based on the Talent 2 platform. All of the bidders have production facilities in Italy which need new orders from the domestic market to sustain production.

Trenitalia says the bidding criteria gives more value to quality and delivery times (60%) than price (40%). A winning bidder is due to be announced in the autumn following the evaluation of the technical proposals, and the trains will be delivered by 2018.