Traktionssysteme Austria (TSA) is doubling down on its roots in electric traction while steering decisively into the road mobility space – and its evolution offers a compelling playbook for European suppliers looking to leverage Indian engineering and scale. Speaking at Busworld Europe in Brussels, Robert Tencl, CEO of TSA, mapped out how a company with 60 years of traction heritage has pivoted from rail-first pedigree to becoming a meaningful supplier to the electric-bus ecosystem.
TSA’s story is straightforward and strategic – born as ABB’s traction division, the company became independent after a management buyout in the late 1990s and has since preserved its rail DNA while progressively expanding into buses. “Traktionssysteme Austria is clearly a commitment to Austria as our home base,” Tencl said. “We are originally a company founded in 1960 as an ABB company and in the end of the 90s was a management buyout.” That continuity of expertise underpins TSA’s claim to be a global leader in traction motors – producing, together with its Indian joint venture, roughly 12,000 traction motors a year.
A Partnership Built on Trust
The India connection has been transformational. TSA partnered with Medha Servo Drives of Hyderabad in a 50–50 joint venture to localise propulsion technology for the Indian market – a relationship Tencl describes as one built on trust rather than a cold corporate transaction. “This company showed us their strategy … and there was a trust from the very beginning. A trustful communication on eye level,” he said. That trust translated into a Hyderabad-based operation that now supplies propulsion systems to OEMs and Indian Railways subsidiaries, and supports an engineering hub that leverages local talent. TSA and its joint venture now employ about 1,200 people and together generate approximately €200 million in annual revenues – €150 million attributable to TSA in Europe and €50 million to the JV.
Tencl frames the partnership as pragmatic and mutually enabling – Medha handles local market access and customer relationships while TSA brings technology and process capability. “Medha is responsible for the Indian market … they speak their language, they know what is important in the Indian market. And we bring the technology and we localise the technology,” he said. The JV began operations around 2012 after the agreement was signed about 2010, and has since scaled to become a primary indigenous propulsion supplier in India alongside global players.
Rail Expertise Meets the Bus Revolution
From a product perspective, TSA’s migration into buses began two decades ago with trolleybuses – a natural extension from tram and metro systems because of shared safety and catenary-based architectures. As batteries matured, the company adapted. “We started with trolley buses and then at the beginning of 2010, 2011, the first trolley-bus manufacturer started to say, okay, instead of the catenary, we are building in batteries,” Tencl recalled. He admits early battery buses were imperfect – “it was too heavy weighted” – but notes rapid progress since those experimental first steps.
Today, buses are an important and growing part of TSA’s unit volumes. “Unit-wise it is 25% and revenue-wise it is 15%,” Tencl said, acknowledging that while bus margins are currently lower than rail, scale and product optimisation will shift the balance. He was clear about the engineering challenge and direction: “All put in a nutshell is smaller, lighter and more powerful. That must be the development.” TSA’s roadmap is therefore focused on motor downsizing, weight reduction and integrating more compact power electronics to create a bus-specific product family rather than repurposed rail machines.
Expanding Horizons: Europe, India and Beyond
Market dynamics play into TSA’s roadmap. In Europe, regulatory pressure – including the Clean Vehicles Directive – is accelerating the shift to alternatively driven public transport. Tencl expects a rapid ramp of electrified buses in city fleets and flagged Solaris as a key OEM partner. “All of the Solaris buses with our motor – fantastic,” he noted, highlighting Solaris as a prototype example of a diesel incumbent turned electric-leader.
Geographically, TSA’s ambitions extend beyond Europe and India. The company has production footprint in the US for metros and EMUs that satisfies Buy America requirements, and Tencl sees Africa as a longer-term growth opportunity, following the pattern of technology adoption that played out first in China, then India. “The next century, between 2030, 2040 will be the Indian,” he said, adding that Africa could follow as markets mature and scale local manufacturing.
The TSA narrative at Busworld combines heritage strengths with a pragmatic globalisation strategy – technology transfer, local engineering hubs, and selective production in-market. Tencl’s message is optimistic but disciplined: trust-driven partnerships unlock capability; the transition from rail to road requires product re-architecture; and winning in electrification is as much about local talent and manufacturing economics as it is about superior IP.
For OEMs and suppliers tracking the electrification curve, TSA’s experience offers a template – use rail-born reliability as an incubator, partner locally to access markets and talent, and invest in lighter, purpose-designed road products to capture volume and margin. As Tencl put it succinctly, “It was not the behaviour of two nameless and faceless organisations … We were two private owned companies, two owners of the company, we worked for us. That made it very, very positive.”
