New Tobu Class 80000 EMUs

Tobu Railway, the private railway serving northwest of Greater Tokyo and the wider Kanto region, unveiled new Tobu Class 80000 EMUs. 25 five-car EMUs are being built by Kinki Sharyo. Seven trains will be completely new, the remaining trains will be built with only four cars new, the fifth intermediate one will be obtained from six-car Tobu Class 60000 EMUs shortened to five-car formations. The 1,067 mm gauge Tobu Railway uses 1,500 V DC powered catenary.

The bodyshells of the Class 80000 are made of aluminium, the length of the end cars is 20,470 mm, while that of the intermediate cars is 20,000 mm. The bodyshell width is 2,800 mm and the car height is 4,065 mm above TOR. The five-car formation consists of three non-powered cars (1, 3, 5) and two powered cars (2, 4). The weight of the non-powered intermediate car is 26.3 t, that of the end cars 29.5 and 29.7 t, and of the driving cars 36.3 and 36.7 t. 

The new Tobu Class 80000 uses SynTRACS technology, consisting of 250 kW synchronous reluctance motors (SynRM) fed by SiC traction inverters. The total traction power is 2,000 kW. To improve recuperation efficiency, the energy recovered during electrodynamic braking is stored in an on-board Li-ion battery and used to power auxiliary circuits such as lighting or air conditioning. Overall energy consumption is reduced by 40 % compared to the Class 8000 (which is quite old Class with resistor regulation, but still in service, which is to be replaced by Class 80000).

Acceleration is 2.23 m/s², deceleration 3.7 m/s² and emergency braking 4.5 m/s², with a maximum speed of 120 km/h. The capacity is 697 passenger with 239 of them seated. The seats are arranged transversely in a commuter style. There is a children's area called Tanshiito, which combines the words "tanoshi" (happy, fun) and "shiito" (from the English word "seat" with Japanese pronunciation).

In addition, train No. 4 will be equipped with track monitoring systems. There will be catenary measuring equipment including pole monitoring, track geometry monitoring and track equipment monitoring (fasteners, joints).

The Tobu Class 80000 is scheduled to enter commercial service on the Tobu Urban Park Line (formerly known as the Tobu Noda Line) on 8 March 2025. It is a 67.2 km semi-circular line running through the Tokyo satellites of Saitama, Kasukabe, Noda, Nagareyama, Matsudo, Kamagaya, Kashiwa and Funabashi.