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Our Cars: Alpine A290 GTS
2 months ago
Find some remote roads and you're likely to start worrying about battery range
So what have I found? On shorter journeys, the A290 tends to return around 2.0 miles/kWh. On longer drives, that increases to something like 2.5m/kWh. (That’s compared to an official WLTP range of 226 miles, equating to 4.4m/kWh – a huge disparity.) I suppose the difference in short and long-trip efficiency can be explained by local journeys tending to be very stop-start, which means lots of accelerating back up to speed, whereas longer drives normally settle into a cruise. Now, if I’m driving for fun on a great road the car’s efficiency does of course suffer, as it does when I keep up with the flow of traffic on the motorway rather than sitting at a steady 65-70mph.
By and large, though, that’s how this car’s efficiency shakes out in day-to-day use, at least at this time of year. The A290 has a 52kWh (usable) battery, which means by my reckoning its real-world range sits somewhere between 104 and 130 miles – if you run it down to zero, which you wouldn’t. Not a lot, is it? I think my biggest issue here is that the 422bhp, two-tonne, dual-motor Audi A6 Avant e-tron I recently waved farewell to was actually more efficient than the Alpine (it averaged 2.6m/kWh during its five months with me through autumn and winter).
So there does seem to be a fundamental efficiency shortcoming here, and it’s hardly as though I drive the A290 everywhere like I’m Jean Ragnotti on the Monte. Yes, I do use the cabin heater and I will often have my heated seat on, but I simply refuse to drive my car wearing a thick coat and wooly hat just to stay warm. My car must meet my needs, not the other way around.
"If all you ever did in your EV hot hatchback was local journeys close to home, you wouldn’t be using it as intended"
All that being said, for the vast majority of the time I’m not worrying about range because we only really use the Alpine for local journeys. And when it’s parked up at home, it can be plugged in and recharged very cost-effectively. If we didn’t have a second car at home, these efficiency concerns would be a far greater problem for us.
But here’s where an electric hot hatch differs from a conventional small EV – if all you ever did in your hot hatchback was those local journeys close to home, you wouldn’t be using it as intended. To do that, you need to take the time to get to great roads where you really can enjoy it in the environment it was designed for. That probably means you’re travelling a reasonable distance from home, and you’ll hardly be sparing the kilowatt hours once you get there, all of which means the car’s limited range will have you relying on the public charge network somewhere along the way. Normally that network is just fine, but sometimes it’s absolutely not. It’s the not knowing that’s frustrating. You have to plan for the worst, just in case.
“The A290 is such a blast along a cracking stretch of road that, if things were different, I really would take some time out of my week to enjoy it on the kind of roads for which it was built”
So what does that mean in practice? Even when you do set aside a day or a few hours to go and enjoy yourself, you can’t drive with abandon. You can’t, for instance, turn back on yourself to repeat the hillside pass that was such a joy because you always have half an eye on the range readout – and charge points in such remote locations are hard to come by. In my experience this particular brand of range anxiety applies to all sporting EVs, from little ones like this to Taycans and even 1000bhp+ electric hypercars. It is, of course, exacerbated in cars that have a modest range to begin with.
I worry about all forthcoming EV performance cars for exactly this reason. The great shame here is that the A290 is such a blast along a cracking stretch of road that, if things were different, I really would take some time out of my week to enjoy it on the kind of roads for which it was built. I’m not asking for a bigger battery because that would mean more weight and less fun, but it should be more efficient. The public charging network needs to improve as well, particularly in rural locations. If I knew the car would return close to 200 miles come what may, and that I could plug in and recharge quickly without having to cut short my fun, the fact that this thing’s powered by an e-motor not a piston engine wouldn’t bother me one bit.
Alpine took on the VW Polo GTI in our recent twin-test
Andrew used this very car in his recent hot hatch twin-test alongside a VW Polo GTI – a conventional petrol hot hatch. I won’t ruin the verdict for those who haven’t yet read it, but he concluded much the same: while the Alpine was inherently more fun to drive than the Volkswagen, the reality of running a sporting EV at the moment acts as a significant disincentive.
I have so much more to say about this car. I want to explain what makes it fun to drive, and how it could be made even more entertaining. I want to write about the little foibles and frustrations that ought to be put right come facelift time. I want to discuss how much it feels like a true Alpine, or not. But all that’s to follow. I’ll spare you the range and efficiency stuff from now on, at least until I have something new to say.
