Japan’s latest bullet train, the thin-nosed Hayabusa or Falcon, made its 300kph debut yesterday, boasting a luxury carriage modeled on airline business class.
Japan has built up a network of cutting-edge Shinkansen train lines since the 1960s that criss-cross the island nation and now hopes to sell the infrastructure technology abroad, including to the US.
The latest ultra-fast tech marvel will make two trips a day from Tokyo to Aomori, a scenic rural backwater on the northern tip of the main Honshu island that has until now been off Japan’s bullet train map. It will also make one more trip a day to Sendai, located between Tokyo and Aomori.
Photo: AFP
Mutsutake Otsuka, chairman of East Japan Railway Co (JR East), stressed the engineering sophistication of the new ride.
“To the best of our ability, we will strive to improve Hayabusa’s passenger comfort, safety and -environmental friendliness, not just its speed,” he told hundreds of people who came to Tokyo station to see the futuristic train.
The mood at the launch was dampened slightly by a seven minute delay to the first service after a passenger fell from the platform at Tokyo station, where more than 1,000 train hobbyists rushed to take pictures.
The train was not moving at the time and the man climbed back up to the platform unaided.
The green-and-silver E5 series Hayabusa travels at up to 300kph to make the 675km trip to Aomori in three hours and 10 minutes. From next year, it will push its top speed to 320kph to become Japan’s fastest train.
Passengers will glide quietly along the straight stretches and tunnels that cut through Japan’s mountainous countryside, said JR East, which has heavily promoted the launch of the new service.
Those willing to pay ¥26,360 (US$320) for a one-way trip can enjoy the comfort of a “GranClass” car, where a cabin attendant will serve them drinks and food in their deeply reclining leather seats on thick woollen carpets.
To promote the service, the train company has also heavily advertised Aomori as a tourist destination, praising its landscape, seafood and winter snow.
Japan’s ultra-fast, frequent and punctual bullet trains have made them the preferred choice for many travelers, rather than flying or road travel, ever since the first Shinkansen was launched in time for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
However, as Japan, and its railway companies, struggle with a fast-graying and shrinking population and falling domestic demand, the government and industry are aggressively seeking to promote the bullet trains abroad.
Japan has in the past sold Shinkansen technology to Taiwan and hopes to capture other overseas markets, such as Brazil and Vietnam, but faces stiff competition from train manufacturers in China, France and Germany.
The biggest prize is a future high-speed US rail network that US President Barack Obama has promoted, to be backed by US$13 billion in public funding.
California’s then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was treated to an early test ride on the Hayabusa when he visited Japan in September.
Japan has also been developing a magnetic levitation or maglev train that, its operator says, reached a world record speed of 581kph in 2003 on a test track near Mount Fuji in Tsuru, west of Tokyo.
The plan is to launch maglev services between Tokyo and the central city of Nagoya by 2027. By 2045 they are expected to link Tokyo with the main western city of Osaka in just 67 minutes, compared with the current two hours 25 minutes.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”