In the end, it will be Velvet ('velvet' in French), the trade name chosen by the Proxima Group among countless proposals for its high-speed trains expected on the Atlantic seaboard from 2028. This is the most advanced project of the competitors in the SNCF Proxima announced last June that it had raised €1 billion from specialist fund Antin Infrastructure Partners.
This will enable you to order fromAlstom from 12 train sets for a total of €850m, with the remainder to be used for the recruitment and training of drivers and on-board staff, the marketing and commercial launch of Velvetand train maintenance... As for SNCF and its TGV M Since these future trains will be variations of the Avelia Horizon, they will be produced at Alstom's La Rochelle and Belfort sites. The green and pink livery of the first locomotive was presented today by Rachel Picardformer director of Voyages SNCF and co-founder of Proxima. The interior design of the trains, however, is still under study, with Velvet promising to offer comfort and connectivity to future customers.
Commissioning from 2028
Once the trains have been approved and SNCF Réseau has obtained the train paths, the first Velvet trainsets are expected to go into service in 2028, a year later than originally planned. However, the approval process should benefit from the tests and the process underway for the TGV M, which is suffering from a series of setbacks and delays, since its entry into service was scheduled for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Alstom, for its part, is confident of being able to meet the deadlines, having decided to invest €150m to increase its high-speed train production capacity.
Attracting 10 million passengers a year
With its Velvet duplex trains, Proxima will serve cities on the Atlantic axis, i.e. Nantes, Bordeaux, Le Mans, Rennes, Angers, La Rochelle... A capacity offer necessary to make the investment profitable and to respond to the strike force of the SNCF with its Inouï and Ouigo TGVs. To begin with, Rachel Picard intends to target the 15% of passengers who cannot find seats by putting 10 million seats a year on the market. Playing the simplicity and detail card to differentiate herself from the SNCF, she hopes to boost the modal shift to rail among business and leisure customers. Unconcerned about the launch of Velvet, she believes that ". supply will create demand ". As the former head of Voyages-sncf.com, particular attention will be paid to digital ticket distribution. For its part, SNCF is preparing for the arrival of this serious challenger by increasing the number of seats on its Atlantic network by 4 million by the end of 2026.
