Hitachi Rail will build Metro’s newest 8000-series train sets, according to a letter from WMATA to the Japanese railcar maker obtained by the Washington Post.

The contract for 256 new cars, with an option of up to 800, is said to be around $1 billion. Part of the contract requires an assembly plant built in the area.

Metro’s eighth-generation cars will be similar to the 7000-series, albeit, with some upgrades more digital maps and signs for advertising, more handholds, and up-to-date cameras and security technology on board. Plus, power plugs.

The new order is set to replace the 2000- and 3000-series cars, but the first new cars likely won’t show up until at least 2024. 

Metro started the search process for a builder back in 2018 but ran into controversy over which company to select.

Kawasaki, the Nebraska-based manufacturer of the 7000-series cars, did not appear interested in the contract and there were few other options out there. Metro received its last 7000-series car in February.

Last year, members of Congress forbade Metro from choosing a Chinese-based manufacturer and threatened to withhold $150 million of annual funding if it did over concerns of over cybersecurity and espionage. The China Railway Rolling Stock Corp. has denied those claims.

Then the Alliance for American Manufacturing, which included dozen trade groups from steelworkers to rail security groups, urged WMATA to keep the 8000-series procurement in line with the Buy America provisions. The act requires 70% of the cost of the components produced and the final assembly of the vehicle to take place in the United States. The group says 750 companies in the U.S. manufacture rail components. The Federal Transit Administration has also urged WMATA to buy local.

Metro says it will use state funds to get around the provision, but that 8% of the contract should come from the region.

“It is a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the law,” the groups said in a September news release. “At a time when the COVID-19 related economic fallout has cost tens of millions of Americans their jobs and over seven hundred thousand manufacturing workers have already been laid off, your decision to evade Buy America requirements represents a missed opportunity to put taxpayer dollars to work creating and supporting jobs in factories across the country.”

Now, it appears Hitachi will get the job to manufacture and create an assembly plant somewhere along the Mid-Atlantic coast that could create hundreds of jobs.

Metro declined to comment on the negotiations.

“The 8000-series rail car procurement process remains active, and we are unable to comment at this stage of the process,” Metro spokesman Dan Stessel told the Post. “We are excited to share information with Metro riders as soon as a contract is awarded.”

Hitachi was founded in 1910 and has made everything from consumer electronics like TVs to construction machinery and telecom systems. The company, headquartered in Italy, began making steam locomotives in 1920 and its first monorail transit cars in 1964 for the Haneda Airport. It also created railcars for Atlanta’s MARTA system from 1984-1988.

In 2017, The Maryland Transit Administration tapped a sub-company of Hitachi for a $400 million contract to build new subway cars and a new train control system for Baltimore.