Things were mediocre at best for Alpine in Formula 1 this year. With 120 points, the factory racing team took sixth place in the team rankings, 160 points behind fifth place (Aston Martin). A performance in the no man’s land of the premier class of racing is certainly not what the proud French imagine. Ultimately, the glamor of Formula 1 should also radiate on the sports cars from Dieppe (Normandy). Especially since seven new cars will roll out of the dream garage (that’s what the Alpine managers call the program) onto the road by 2030.
They should be emission-free. This is what the all-powerful Renault boss Luca de Meo decided during his visit to the English Channel. “Emission-free does not necessarily mean battery-electric,” explains Robert Bonetto, Vice President of Alpine Engineering. What the technician means by this can be seen in the Alpenglow racing prototype, which is powered by a hydrogen combustion engine. Nevertheless, sporty e-mobiles are at the top of the agenda. When it comes to power vehicles, everyone is waiting for an electric A110. The Alpine par excellence, which is supposed to stand up to the Porsche E-Boxter.
The many fans of the original Alpine will have to wait until the end of 2026. The Alpine A110 E-ternité concept shows what the car could look like, in which the battery packs are stowed at the front and rear and not between the axles. To usher in the electric Alpine aegis, the Renault subsidiary is spending a lot of money and putting the electric two-seater on a new architecture APP (Alpine Performance Platform), which, as Robert Bonetto emphasizes, will not be a derivative of an existing Renault architecture. However, at the same time, the Alpine developers are dampening expectations. There will be no one-to-one transformation of the agile mid-engine athlete into the electric age.
One of the traditions that is retained in an E-Alpine is authenticity. “We’re not faking anything”; explains product manager Charlie Biardeau and rejects artificially generated combustion engine noise and switching processes, as are part of the package in the Hyundai Ioniq 5N. The sound of the electric motor is modulated to the maximum, but not distorted. Nevertheless, the E-Alpine A110 is intended to offer the owner a special experience in which the driver merges with the car, so that the next A110 also becomes the lighthouse car for the entire Alpine model range.
In order for the new architecture on which the E-A110 stands to be worthwhile, synergies must be created and the technical shell must be used. This will also be the case at Alpine, which is why the new architecture will be very flexible and allow for different types of vehicles. However, this basis is not available in all of the seven models mentioned. The Alpine A290_ß is the sporty brother of the Renault 5 E-Tech Electric, which is making its debut at the Geneva Motor Show. That’s why the Alpine A290_ß will also be on the CMF-B EV platform. Of course, not without changes that give the sporty small electric car the pizzazz that the production model doesn’t have. The front end of the A290_ß is changed. The Alpine also gets torque vectoring and a multi-link axle.
The study already gives a concrete outlook on the production model. The dimensions for the Alpine A290, which will also be released next year, have been determined: 3,990 meters long, 1,820 meters wide and 1,520 meters high. The short wheelbase of 2.53 meters guarantees agility. This is a noticeable difference from the study: 4.05 meters long, 1.85 meters wide and 1.48 meters high. One thing that the Alpine technicians are working on are the brakes, where the transition from recuperation to “analog” deceleration should be smooth. Charlie Biardeau promises an exact pressure point and that the brake is easy to dose. “We drove a lot of competing products and were disappointed,” said the technician. The A290 will have around 165 kW / 224 HP, which is certainly more than the Renault 5 E-Tech Electric with which it will share the batteries, but which were developed for the Alpine.
A BEV-C crossover GT, which rolls off the assembly line in the Alpine birthplace in Dieppe, will complete the dynamic electric trio in 2025. Alpine relies on NMC batteries (nickel-manganese-cobalt), whose cells are produced by the start-up Verkor in a twelve gigawatt factory in Dunkirk. “The Alpine will be the first car with the performance battery,” promises the chief developer of the electric drive train, Frédéric Lenindre. Unlike the Scenic, the twelve modules in the Alpine have a capacity of 89 kilowatt hours, i.e. two kWh more. The batteries use 400 volt technology. Charging from ten to 80 percent should be done in around 20 minutes. By 2028, this time should fall to twelve to 15 minutes. In the future, Alpine will continue to rely on NMC batteries, where the energy density will continue to increase. This helps the Alpine dynamics equation.
