An often-touted gripe against high-performance electric vehicles is how heavy they can be, lugging around a massive battery to power the motors for longer than a few minutes. However, Alpine is flipping the script with the next iteration of its venerable sports car. The French manufacturer claims that its next-generation A110 EV will be lighter than its internal combustion competitors when it debuts next year. This is the same car Alpine hopes to sell in the United States.
Alpine
Alpine revealed the A390, its second-ever EV, on Tuesday. While the A290 is an uprated badge-swapped Renault 5 E-Tech, the new tri-motor sport fastback is bespoke to the brand. The five-seater A390 produces 470 horsepower with a 0-to-60-mph time of 4.8 seconds and debuts a new active torque vectoring system. The fastback’s 89-kWh battery will get 345 miles of range in Europe and is equipped with 190-kW fast charging. Don’t worry if this all-wheel-drive car isn’t agile enough for your taste, Alpine isn’t abandoning its sporty roots.
The French brand is gradually unveiling a seven-model electric “Dream Garage” lineup over the rest of this decade to revive the automaker’s image. The A110 EV is believed to be the next car in the works, with Alpine developing a new electric sports car platform that will also underpin a four-seat A310 model. Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo told Autocar, “The next A110 will be lighter than a comparable car with a combustion engine but with no compromise in performance.” De Meo compared how Porsche doesn’t use the 911 platform for anything, but cars like the Cayenne and Taycan are shared with other models — like how the A390’s platform is shared with the Renault Scenic.
Alpine is taking a refined version of a concept into production
Alpine becoming a French Porsche is an appealing idea, and the French brand has toyed with an electric sports car before. The A110 E-ternité concept was revealed in 2022 as a harbinger of its all-electric future. It attempted to replicate a traditional ICE A110 as closely as possible, but there was still a performance deficit. The E-ternité was 568 pounds heavier and had 80 miles less range, but was 0.3 seconds faster from 0 to 60 mph. One can only imagine the performance gains the A110 EV will benefit from when shifting to a completely bespoke platform.
The only other question that remains is if we will actually see these new Alpine electric vehicles in the United States. It’s fair to say that President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs have thrown a wrench in the plans of any European manufacturer considering an expansion into the American market. Alpine was in talks with AutoNation to distribute its cars across the country, but that was before “Liberation Day.”