Driving the Alpine A110 R: why the new A390 has a lot to live up to 

This is the new Alpine A390 – an alternative to cars like the Cupra Tavascan and Porsche Macan EV – with a focus on fun. It gets a tri-motor setup with up to 470hp, and the French brand has made some bold claims about the way it drives.

Alpine says it built this car to be “as fast and agile as the A110”. That’ll take some doing in a car which is around a tonne heavier, but the A390 packs some clever tech to make it happen. We’ve been driving the A110 R to get a sense of what this new EV has to replicate.

Driving the Alpine A110 R: track car thrills for the road

We’ve had a go in the most hardcore Alpine A110 on a closed track. The R is more powerful, lighter, lower and stiffer than the standard car all in the name of racetrack thrills.

Mounted in the middle is a 1.8-litre turbocharged four cylinder engine with 300hp and 340Nm of torque, and this is paired to a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox driving the rear wheels. It only weighs 1,104kg, making it around 34kg lighter than the standard A110.

Get this car out on a twisty road and that lightness makes itself immediately apparent. It changes direction like nothing else with number plates, and the steering is almost telepathic. The A110 R handles very well indeed.

It sits 10mm lower to the ground than the standard car, and you also get adjustable suspension so you can set the car up just as you want it. It manages to stay totally flat through the corners without rattling your teeth out over bumps.

That engine is also fabulous. It spins up super quickly, and it has just the right amount of power for this car. It feels quick, but you can still rev it out on the road without facing a driving ban. And the excellent sports exhaust system encourages you to really thrash this car, because it sounds epic and you get plenty of pops and crackles when you let off.

Being such a hardcore sports car, there are some compromises to be made which may make the A110 R tricky to live with as an only car. The carbon fibre bucket seats are great on track, but after a long trip you might find them a bit firm. The four-point racing harnesses could also prove tiresome to do up every time you get in, and the lack of rear window makes parking a challenge.

But if you want an Alpine A110 to live with every day, you can also get a slightly softer GT version which has luxuries like a premium sound system, as well as normal seatbelts. For the ultimate driving experience though, the Alpine A110 R gives even the Porsche 718 Cayman GTS a run for its money.

New Alpine A390 electric car: how will a two-tonne EV drive like a sports car?

Alpine draws a lot of comparisons between the A110 and the new A390, saying it aims to replicate the lightness and agility of that car in this four-door electric hatchback. It’s likely to be talking about the standard A110 rather than the R, but it’s still a very tough challenge to set itself.

The A390 weighs around a tonne more than the A110, and it’ll take a lot of clever engineering to hide that additional heft. It’ll also need a lot more power, which it has.

All A390s have three electric motors, and you can choose between 400hp or 470hp outputs. The latter will do 0-60mph in 3.9 seconds, over half a second quicker than the standard A110 and 0.1 of a second less than the A110 R.

But Alpines aren’t about straight-line speed, they’re about putting a smile on your face in the corners. The A390 debuts some clever tech to help in that department.

It has two electric motors on the rear axle, one for each wheel, and another one powering the front wheels too. This gives it the handling characteristics of a rear-wheel drive car, and has allowed Alpine to develop a clever torque vectoring system.

When you chuck the A390 into a corner, it’ll send more power to the outer wheel – helping sling the rear end around and making this massive EV feel more agile. It’s an active system as well, meaning it can detect your steering angle, as well as any over or understeer and adjust the power accordingly. There’s even a drift mode if you want to let your inner hooligan out.

We’ll have to wait to drive the car before we can tell you if this clever technology actually works in the real world, but we can tell you that the A390 will be much easier to live with day-to-day than the A110.

It’ll seat five people for starters, and you get a 532-litre boot. That’s over 40 litres bigger than a Kia EV6, and it’s around 8 litres shy of the Cupra Tavascan.

Just because it’s a performance-focused electric car doesn’t mean Alpine has skimped on range. The A390 will do up to 345 miles on a charge, around 45 miles more than the equivalent dual-motor Cupra Born.

The A390 will go on sale in the UK in November, with first deliveries starting in the first half of 2026. Exact prices haven’t been confirmed just yet, but you can expect the lower-powered version to start from around £60,000.

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