Siemens Mobility has signed a €1bn contract to supply 10 Velaro Novo high speed trainsets plus signalling, telecommunications and electrification for two lines in Vietnam. The buyer is VinSpeed High Speed Railway Investment & Development Joint Stock Co, a subsidiary of industrial group Vingroup, which will handle project development, track and civil works itself.

The parties announced the turnkey contract for rolling stock and railway systems on September 22. It follows a comprehensive strategic partnership and technology transfer agreement that Siemens Mobility and VinSpeed signed in December.

Each of the seven-car Velaro Novo trainsets will be 200 m long with a top speed of 350 km/h and 760 seats. Siemens describes them as wide-body trainsets with an 'empty tube' structural design.

The contract includes ETCS Level 2 signalling with automatic train operation integrated into the onboard units. Siemens says this will be the world's first deployment of ATO over ETCS on a national high speed line — a claim that, if confirmed when the lines enter service, would mark a first for the signalling architecture at this scale.

The equipment is destined for two standard gauge high speed lines. One would run east from Hanoi to Hạ Long in Quảng Ninh province, serving four stations including one at the future Gia Binh Airport. The second, 54 km route would run south from Ben Thanh in Ho Chi Minh City to Cần Giờ on the coast, opening with two stations and gaining four more later.

Siemens Mobility CEO Michael Peter framed the deal as part of a wider shift. 'Vietnam is entering an exciting new era of mobility, and we are proud to contribute to this transformation,' he said on September 22. He added that the Velaro Novo trains 'consume 30% less energy than previous models and offer more than 10% additional passenger capacity.'

Those figures are manufacturer claims rather than measured results in Vietnamese operation; they draw on the performance of the Velaro Novo platform against earlier Velaro generations. The energy and capacity gains, if achieved on the Hanoi–Hạ Long and Ben Thanh–Cần Giờ routes, would lower the cost per seat-km and raise throughput relative to legacy high speed fleets.

The deal narrows Vietnam's high speed rail ambitions to regional corridors after Vingroup withdrew an earlier cross-country proposal to focus on regional projects. Both lines in the new contract connect major urban centres with coastal and airport destinations rather than linking north and south.

No delivery dates, construction timeline or per-train pricing appear in the announcement, leaving the September 22 contract as a framework for what will be one of Southeast Asia's largest privately led high speed rail programmes.