Running gears form a significant part of the weight of a railway vehicle, and if the weight of these could be reduced, this would affect the vehicle’s energy consumption, especially for services with many stops. In the project RUN2Rail, a part of the EU-funded initiative Shift2Rail, a single axle running gear was proposed for metro vehicles. Active suspensions were suggested to overcome deficiencies in terms of ride comfort and wheelset steering, which are well known for such vehicles. The concept has been further developed in the project NextGear, also part of Shift2Rail, where the material of the running gear frame has been changed from steel to composite to further reduce the weightand the wheelset guidance updated to decrease the running resistance in curves. Prototypes of frame and wheelset steering actuator will be built and tested in the laboratory to validate the performance.The present study is comparing a reference vehicle from Metro Madrid with the proposed vehicle in terms of energy consumption for simulated service on Metro Madrid Line 10 with curvature, gradients, stops and speed profiles considered. Only parameters with relation to the weight, curving performance and auxiliary energy consumption for the active system are assumed different for the vehicles. The vehicles are further assumed to use regenerative braking, hence the energy needed to accelerate the vehicle will be regenerated when braking, but there will be transformation losses with relation to the weight. The simulation results show that the very innovative NextGear vehicles will reduce energy consumption by 8% compared to the reference vehicles. The lower weight and the decreased running resistance in curves contribute about as much to the savings.