RACE-BRED: ENOUGH SAID? (some text hidden) --NONE--

By Jonathan Crouch

Alpine says the A390 brings racing genes to the EV family hatch segment. Jonathan Crouch reports.

Ten Second Reviewword count: 30

The A390 is Alpine's first family EV. Lots of work has gone in here to make this fast electric five-door feel a credibly enthusiast-orientated electric car. Has it paid off?

Backgroundword count: 159

More than any other car brand, except perhaps for Lotus, Alpine is synonymous with lightness. Which is why at just over a tonne, its first modern-era sports car, the A110, could keep up with far more powerful rivals. With that in mind, what are we to make of this, the Alpine A390? It weighs 2,121kg. And it's not a sports car - in fact, it's the first Alpine model in living memory to be able to seat five. Thanks to underpinnings distantly borrowed from the current Renault Scenic SUV. Which in turn means that it's all-electric. This isn't Alpine's first EV - we've already had the Renault 5-based A290 - but the power output here is in a different league from that little supermini sportster. The A390 has even more powerful mid-sized EV performance cars in its sights, like the Hyundai IONIQ 5N and the Kia EV6 GT. So like its brand, it's ambitiously targeted. Realistically targeted? Let's see.

Engines and Tech Specword count: 396

We were interested to see what Alpine might make of the fairly unremarkable core Scenic starting point here. The brand does after all have a rich history of performing handling miracles with unremarkable Renault underpinnings - as it did with the A290 small EV hatch. And so it is here. Because it's an AWD family EV, the A390 can't rely on lightness for agility as Alpine models traditionally have. So instead, the brand has concentrated on creating it by carefully tuning the torque vectoring and the traction control and introducing a tri-motor layout that contributes to an output of up to 470hp and is unique on a car costing under £100,000. Rivals create agility of this sort by using a rear clutch pack to distribute torque across the back axle, but Alpine uses a pair of motors instead because it says that via Active Torque Vectoring, they give you quicker reactions at speed through a corner. Complimenting this set-up are two associated systems; Alpine Torque Pre-Control handles traction and e-AWD distributes torque between the front and rear axles to balance the vehicle on turns. A couple of things you might have expected to find are absent; four-wheel steering (which was fitted to the old Renaultsport Megane hot hatch) and adaptive damping. So the five drive modes ('Save', 'Normal', 'Sport', 'Personalised' and 'Track') are there to tweak throttle, steering and the extent of your stability control net. You can't manually alter the rear power split, but there's a rotary steering wheel dial to alter brake regen. Lots of work has gone into stiffening the Scenic-derived AmpR Medium platform that's shared with this car's less sophisticated twin motor segment cousin the Nissan Ariya NISMO. The wheelbase length is unique - and there's a wider rear track. The power figure we gave you earlier applies to the top A390, the GTS. If you don't need as much as 470hp (with 824Nm of torque), there's a lesser 390hp GT version, though with that the 0-62mph time drops from 3.9s to 4.8s, even further away from the class standard set by much more powerful rivals like the Hyundai IONIQ 5N. Range from the bespoke 89kWh battery is unremarkable, rated at 345 miles for the GT and 313 miles for the GTS. As the miles click down, you can add in an electrical propulsion sound - or choose to turn it off.

To see the full road test text contact us on 0330 0020 227