Sports EV will be revealed in full next year, with Alpine boss promising better performance and interior
Alpine boss Philippe Krief has vowed that the second-generation, fully electric A110 sports car will be better to drive than its fabled predecessor in every aspect.
The two-seater is due to be revealed in full next year, but the French firm has shown a first glimpse with the A110 Future running up the hill at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.
That machine is a development car, featuring the new Alpine Performance Platform (APP) and electric powertrain underneath bodywork based on the petrol A110, which recently went out of production.
Alpine has developed the APP from scratch for the new A110, forgoing the underfloor battery typically used in an EV for two smaller packs at each end of this chassis. This allows the car to sit lower and balances the weight distribution.
Krief said that the new A110 is marginally longer and wider than its predecessor but shares an identical length-to-height ratio.
Asked by Autocar what the new A110 must achieve, Krief said: “First of all, it has to be a sports car. In terms of shape, the car is an A110. In terms of product, it has to perform as a sports car should, so it must be fun to drive.”
Krief said the firm’s development brief was to “beat the [current] A110 in all areas that made it a success, such as the feeling of lightness. The new platform allows us to develop a perfect integration between mechanics and electronics.”
He noted that around 95% of the components on the car are new and not shared within the wider Renault Group.
He also cited the development brief to ensure the EV could lap a circuit at “maximum speed and maximum lateral acceleration” for at least 20 minutes.
He added: “This will make the car at least as good as the currently one – and I do believe it will be even better in terms of this kind of performance.”
Alpine has yet reveal the design of the new car, but Krief says that it will “keep the family feeling of A110 but will be even more futuristic – so it will be better than the current A110.”
Krief said a particular focus had gone on developing the interior – one area where the A110 has been criticised in the past, due to common parts shared with other Renault Group cars – to give it an “extreme sports car feel”.
He continued: “The current A110 is an extraordinary sports car, but the cockpit is not that extraordinary. We’ve done huge, huge work in order to have a timeless cockpit – not one where you will find a lot of screens but something very intuitive, where the driver is at the centre.”
Another key aspect for the next A110 will be increasing the number of personalisation options, which will be key for the firm in achieving higher margins as it pushes to win over more premium buyers and expand its sales.
Krief added that the APP is forecast to last for at least two generations of A110 and noted that “in the middle of those two generations will be a special extreme version”.
The A110 EV will be launched as a classic two-seat coupé but will also be offered as a 2+2, and there will be cabriolet versions of both models.
Alpine has recently launched the A390 crossover alongside the A290 hot hatch as part of its bold expansion, and Krief said that the plan was to continue growing.
Asked how big he wanted the firm to become, Krief said “we are more on the Ferrari side in terms of volume than on the Porsche side”, suggesting a goal to sell around 15,000 cars year.
But he added: “We are not Ferrari, of course, and we are not aiming to be Porsche: we aim more to be more niche than Porsche, because we want to preserve the exclusivity and the profitability for our models.”
