The Écotrain: Rail Innovation for low-density rural lines
On 14 November 2025, a twelve-meter-long prototype of the EcoTrain was placed in front of the Palais de l’Élysée, as part of the national exhibition “Fabriqué en France”. The event sought to highlight made-in-France industrial initiatives, and the EcoTrain — designed for low-density, rural rail lines — embodies the dual challenges of decarbonisation and regional mobility.
The EcoTrain is electric, modular, autonomous, and lightweight, able to carry 30 seated passengers and reach up to 100 km/h. It targets the repurposing of disused railway lines in rural areas — an ambition aligned with national policies of territorial inclusion and transport decarbonisation.
A collaborative effort with leading industrial and academic partners
The EcoTrain project brings together a consortium of French industrial and academic players, each contributing unique expertise:
- Stratiforme: Specialist in design and prototyping of large hybrid composite parts using stratification, 3D printing, machining, and modeling. Their know-how includes finite element dimensioning, integration of biosourced fibers and resins, and sensor embedding for infrastructure monitoring.
- Socofer: Expert in railway construction and innovation, mobilizing its engineering teams (mechanics, hydraulics, electrotechnics) and production workshops (boilermaking, mechanics, electricity, painting, testing) to design and manufacture the rolling stock.
- Clearsy: Brings mastery of railway safety standards (CENELEC EN50120x), secure equipment design, and advanced sensing technologies (Lidar, ultrasonic, video) combined with analog electronics and signal processing.
- Academic partners – IMT Mines Albi & IMT Nord Europe: Contribute research in decision-support systems under uncertainty, Internet Physique, logistics flow management, 5G communications, security, and resilience. They also develop advanced sensor fusion and data interpretation methods, including deep learning for person detection and action classification.
For Syntony GNSS, participating as the GNSS-receiver provider in this ecosystem represents a strategic milestone: it links our core expertise in high-precision GNSS, hybrid architectures, and industrial solutions to an application domain that increasingly demands robust positioning, timing, and navigation subsystems.
This collaborative approach ensures that EcoTrain integrates cutting-edge technologies across materials, safety, navigation, and AI-driven perception.
Syntony GNSS role in the project
Syntony GNSS has been selected as one of the industrial SMEs co-developing the EcoTrain. More details on our involvement can be found in our official announcement: Revolutionizing Rural Mobility – The Eco-Train Project and its Cutting-Edge GNSS Technologies.
Specifically, Syntony is responsible for manufacturing the hybrid GNSS receiver that will serve on-board the vehicle, enabling navigation, precise positioning, and aiding autonomous operations even in challenging environments (semi-rural lines, degraded GNSS visibility, tree coverage, overhead wires).
Our hybrid GNSS receiver leverages:
- Multi-constellation and multi-frequency tracking
- Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)
- High integrity and continuity levels
This combination ensures reliable path-tracking, obstacle-response capabilities, event detection, data logging, and robust long-term operation in rural conditions.
For more information about our GNSS receiver, visit the SoftSpot product page.
The convergence of industrial, territorial, and technological goals
The EcoTrain showcased at the Elysée signals a much broader narrative: the rise of sustainable, lightweight, autonomous mobility. It is one of 123 projects selected for the national exhibition organized to highlight French industrial excellence.
For Syntony GNSS, the EcoTrain demonstrates how next-generation rail solutions increasingly depend on advanced GNSS navigation subsystems. It reinforces our belief that precise, robust, and hybridised positioning technologies serve as foundational blocks of future transportation — from light rail to autonomous shuttles and rural mobility vehicles.
By enabling the safe reuse of rural or abandoned railway lines, the EcoTrain also aligns with Syntony’s values of eco-design, energy efficiency, and circular mobility.
To learn more about the EcoTrain Project or our GNSS receivers’ solutions, feel free to contact us.