Our opinion on the Alpine A390
The Alpine A390 is not your typical premium electric SUV. In the areas you wouldn’t expect a car like this to be good, it shines – it’s engaging to drive, performance is exhilarating, and the design stands out in the sea of identikit rivals. It is, however, lacking in practicality and the all-important premium feel demanded at this price point.
Keen drivers will happily accept the compromise and have a brilliant car to enjoy. More family-focused buyers tempted by the Alpine’s ability and exclusivity may find it a little harder to justify. Regardless, the fact Alpine has created a two-tonne SUV running on electric power that shows obvious connections to its A110 lightweight sports car is to be commended.
About the Alpine A390
The A390 is Alpine’s SUV. As we’ve seen from Porsche, Lotus, Lamborghini, Ferrari and the rest, performance car brands with the willpower to resist building a high-riding cash cow to fill out their range are few and far between. Whether the A390 turns out to be the volume seller Alpine needs to prop up its bold plans for more niche market models like the A110 lightweight sports car, and the A290 hot hatch remains to be seen.
The A390 is very much an Alpine in terms of its design. This is an all-electric, 4.6-metre-long, five-seat car that’s packing a high-performance electric powertrain, but the body shape is somewhere between an SUV, a coupe, and a four-door fastback. Alpine has dreamed up the term ‘sports fastback’ to try to explain it.
The car’s technical starting point doesn’t make good reading for fans of the high-performance French brand. Unlike the A110 sports car, which features a bespoke all-aluminium structure and platform, the A390 shares more with the Renault Scenic and Nissan Ariya.
The good news is that both of those are classy, mid-size electric SUVs, and Alpine has a fine record of taking relatively mundane Renault platforms and producing cars that are a far more interesting proposition to enthusiastic drivers – just look at what it did with the Renault 5 supermini in creating the A290. The A390 is no rebadge job; under the skin, Alpine’s engineers have made the platform their own.
The efforts Alpine has gone to with the A390 are quickly evident in its specification. Its electric motors are bespoke, and have been developed in-house to give the A390 the only tri-motor layout in any electric car under £100,000. Its 89kWh battery is also unique to this model and about the right size for a car of this fiercely competitive class. There are major changes to the chassis, including a whole new rear section and aluminium suspension components to save weight.
So far, we’ve tested the A390 extensively in GT and GTS forms on European roads.
Alpine has clearly been practising some form of engineering witchcraft in order to make this 2.1-tonne EV feel genuinely agile on the road. There are a few key elements that have gone into the cauldron to unlock this ability, including the tri-motor layout and the suspension with its hydraulic bump stops.
You get five driving modes: Save (what would be called Eco on less performance-focused cars), Normal, Sport, Perso – where you can choose your personal settings – and Track. They’re selected via a button on the Alpine’s large, thick rimmed steering wheel, where you’ll also find a tempting red switch marked ‘OV’. This is the overtake boost mode and it acts a bit like a secondary, thumb-operated accelerator. Hold it down and you get a boost of acceleration for up to 10 seconds in addition to whatever you’re asking for with the traditional foot pedal, followed by a 30-second recharge time. It was great fun for blasting past slower traffic safely on our Spanish test route, not that you really need it in a 400bhp Alpine.