The Siemens S70, its successor the S700 and European variant, the Avanto, are a series of low-floor light-rail vehicles (LRV) and streetcars manufactured by Siemens Mobility, a division of German conglomerate Siemens AG. The S70 and S700 are built for the United States market where the vehicles are in use on several light rail and streetcar systems. The S70 was manufactured from 2002 to 2017 and the S700 from 2014 to present, but the model designation S700 was only introduced in 2019 and then retroactively applied to certain versions of the S70 built in earlier years. In this field, it competes mainly with Bombardier and Kinki Sharyo low-floor LRVs and modern streetcars manufactured by Inekon and Brookville Equipment Corporation. The Avanto was built for the European market starting in 2006 and was principally sold to tram-train systems which, in whole or part, share their tracks with heavy rail trains. In Europe, the Siemens Combino and Avenio models are the preferred offerings for purely light rail or tramway systems. In the tram-train market, its principal competitors are Bombardier's Flexity Link and Alstom's Citadis. To date, the Avanto has been sold to two tram-train operations in France. History The first order for S70 vehicles in the U.S. – where the three-section model was originally known as S70 Avanto but soon became known only as the S70 – was placed in 2001 for the MetroRail system in Houston, Texas, and the first car was received by Houston in April 2003. This first series of S70 cars entered service on January 1, 2004, the opening day of Houston's light rail system. The first purchase of the European version, a five-section tram-train design sold under the Avanto brand name, was a 15-car order placed in July 2002 by SNCF, for its line between Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bondy, which is now known as Île-de-France tramway Line 4. Redesign and model number change At Siemens's U.S. manufacturing facilities (in Sacramento, California), only model S700 remains in production, the last S70s having been built in 2017, for Minneapolis–Saint Paul's Metro Transit light rail system. The model number S700 was adopted by Siemens Mobility in 2019 as a rebranding of a version of the S70 that had been in production since 2014. That newer version resulted from a redesign in which Siemens adapted the center-section truck that it had previously used in its SD660 model (built 1996–2005) to the S70,