Interview with Nicolas Lange: “We’re reimagining rail as a holistic system"

Mr. Lange, the first InnoTrans took place 30 years ago. When you walk through the trade show today, what has changed?

That’s easy to answer: pretty much everything, except for the steel rails. InnoTrans began as a modest trade show for rail vehicle technology, focusing on vehicles, mechanics, and mechatronics. Today, visitors come to the world’s leading trade fair for rail mobility and find themselves in the midst of a global innovation forum. For example, the role of signaling and track technology has grown rapidly, as have digitalization, automation, data-driven control, robotics, and, increasingly, artificial intelligence.

What do you take from this - where has the industry been heading?

The entire industry is currently making giant strides. InnoTrans reflects how technology and the market have evolved. Mechanics and mechatronics haven’t disappeared - they are the foundation upon which everything is built. But the real pressure to innovate has shifted: toward greater vehicle availability, toward data, and toward its use. Rail is now viewed as an integrated system, and the trade show demonstrates this directly.

What global trends and demands are currently driving the markets the most?

The pressure to shift more traffic to rail is increasing around the globe. We are once again feeling the dependence on fossil fuels particularly acutely. But especially in large metropolitan areas, infrastructure cannot be expanded at will. It is therefore crucial to make better use of existing networks and to manage the flow of traffic as an efficient movement of people and goods. As infrastructure utilization increases, so does sensitivity to disruptions. This makes reliability and availability critical success factors - precisely where smart electronics and digital solutions have the greatest impact.

Are there trends in the industry that are currently receiving too little attention?

Rather, it is a societal reality in markets such as Europe, North America, East Asia, Japan, and South Korea. Due to demographic trends, there will be an ever-decreasing supply of human labor available to maintain rail operations in these regions. This applies to labor-intensive areas such as freight shunting yards - where working conditions are also hazardous - to the workshops where trains are maintained, and also to interactions with passengers. As a result, efforts are underway everywhere to find ways to automate these processes.

Where do you see regional differences and specific characteristics?

The specific needs of rail vehicle manufacturers and operators vary greatly from region to region. In Europe and North America, the issue of capacity is the most pressing, whether due to space constraints in the existing network or a significant need to modernize the infrastructure. In Europe, this is reflected, for example, in the efforts surrounding the rollout of the European Train Control System (ETCS). India, on the other hand, is massively expanding its physical infrastructure with new intercity routes, freight corridors, and new metro lines.

Hardly anyone is paying attention to Africa, right?

Apart from South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria, railways aren’t yet a major issue in Africa. Egypt is currently building a 2,000-kilometer high-speed rail network, one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in the world. We’re developing braking systems specifically designed for the extreme conditions in North Africa - primarily desert sand and heat. This isn’t standard business; it’s real engineering work pushing the boundaries of what’s currently possible. We’ve had a strong local presence in South Africa for years and aim to use that as a base to tap into other markets on the continent.

China is considered particularly technology-hungry and innovation-driven. How exactly?

Digitalization is currently progressing the fastest in China - “fail fast, move on to the next development cycle.” There are also structural reasons for this. Regulations apply centrally across a massive market, approvals are granted quickly, and customers are willing to try out new technologies and help develop them further. For Knorr-Bremse, this means: What we develop and test there provides us with insights that we can adapt to other markets. Any company that wants to succeed in this environment must act with extreme flexibility and agility. We’ve proven this in recent years and are now taking the next logical step.

You’re referring to Knorr-Bremse’s strategic realignment.

“Rail Mobility Visioneers” is not just our slogan for InnoTrans 2026, but our philosophy and our approach: moving away from being purely a vehicle supplier toward becoming a Tier 1 partner for the entire rail ecosystem. In this new role, we view vehicles, infrastructure, and digital applications as an integrated whole. Because it is precisely at this intersection that the next wave of innovation for rail will take shape. Knorr-Bremse always wants to be where it can make the biggest impact with its technologies - for example, in smart electronics and intelligent signaling and safety technology. Conversely, there will always be elements of our portfolio that we deliberately phase out. I’m referring to areas that are becoming more commodity-like - that is, where products are becoming more interchangeable and technological leadership no longer plays a sufficiently differentiating role in the competitive landscape.

Why is Knorr-Bremse ideally suited for this new role?

We are uniquely positioned for this holistic perspective: We are essentially the only provider that, as a true cross-sector supplier, thinks across all standards, subsystems, operators, and regions. No vehicle type, no operator, and no market limits us in this regard. Added to this is decades of expertise in the vehicle itself and a portfolio for rail networks and infrastructure that we’ve built up over time. With electronics and software as future growth areas and drivers of innovation, the circle is now complete. We don’t think in terms of a hodgepodge of individual products. We think systemically. InnoTrans is the platform where we’re bringing this to life for our customers for the first time: We’re reimagining rail—as a complete system.

Where exactly is Knorr-Bremse applying the decisive technological levers?

Safety-critical systems form our foundation. In this area, we are on the verge of further technological leaps. For example, with our new digital-electromechanical brake, which uses sustainable, energy-efficient brake-by-wire technology to generate and transmit braking signals and braking energy. It can be fully integrated into the vehicle without any changes to the existing train control system. Our Digital Automatic Coupler, an enabler for digitized freight transport, is already undergoing field testing. With functions such as automatic train naming, automatic brake testing, and automatic uncoupling, rail freight transport is finally entering the digital age. After all, the basic principle of how freight cars are prepared for departure has not changed much in 130 years. Our new driver assistance system, LEADER Flow, now also incorporates extensive live traffic data from preceding trains into its recommendations for the most energy-efficient driving possible. Many of these features are also essential for the automated driving of the future. And in Australia, kilometer-long heavy-haul trains have been traveling completely driverless through the outback for years using our technology.

You describe Knorr-Bremse as a systems provider - no longer just a vehicle supplier. What is the key difference there?

You can see this very clearly in our own history: In the past, when we talked about systems, we were talking about brakes. Then we began to understand that a door is also an access system. And when we think of electronics today as an overarching layer of intelligence that encompasses everything, we can take that concept even further - with an eye toward the entire rail ecosystem. It’s important to note in this broader context: We will not compete with our customers. The vehicle manufacturer bears responsibility for the vehicle. We are the partner who - and this is our goal - contributes crucial functionalities, more closely networks elements of the vehicle and the track, and makes rail transport as a whole smarter.

Artificial intelligence is on everyone’s mind. What is Knorr-Bremse’s perspective on “AI”? Is it just a buzzword or a real game-changer?

Internally, we use AI primarily to streamline and optimize our processes. This helps us shorten development cycles and bring our technologies to market faster - and frees up our engineers to focus on what really matters: developing new technologies, not managing them. With regard to the rail ecosystem, the focus is on monitoring, diagnostics, and telematics functions. Even today, through our subsidiary Railnova and our signaling division, we’re already extensively involved in condition monitoring, providing recommendations for action, and environmental detection - for example, identifying damage or heat-induced warping on the track. After all, when operators have more information, they can plan their operations more effectively. Our communication and software solutions make signal boxes, railroad crossings, and switches smarter. These are all applications that “AI” will further enhance as a purposefully deployed tool. Both internally and externally, we view “AI” as a constantly evolving tool.

New players, more competition, a faster pace - how do you stay in the driver’s seat rather than being driven by events in this environment?

According to the UIC, railways transport seven percent of the world’s passengers and eight percent of the world’s freight while accounting for just 1.2 percent of global emissions. These still comparatively low transport figures demonstrate the enormous potential that lies in rail. However, this potential will only be realized if the capacity, appeal, and reliability of rail are significantly increased over the coming years. Fortunately, many new players in our market have also recognized this. They are driving a wave of innovation in the form of new technologies, new business models, and often new speeds as well. This is a benefit for the industry as a whole, even if it intensifies competition. The pace-setter will be whoever is not only fast but also brings the necessary depth: an understanding of the system, a global presence, and reliability. Knorr-Bremse has set standards time and again throughout its history. That is the clear standard by which we will measure ourselves in our new role as well.