Alpine A310 due in 2028 as Porsche 911 rival

Yahoo

20-03-2025

A310 will be a stretched, more practical A110 and use new-era design cues
Alpine will crown its electric sports car line-up with the A310 – a 2+2 tourer that will put the French firm toe to toe with the likes of Porsche, Maserati and Lotus.
Tipped by the marque to be 'an icon of future sports cars', the new EV will arrive in 2028 and serve as a flagship for an expanded all-electric Alpine line-up.
The firm's new range will include the recently launched A290 hot hatch, the upcoming Tesla Model Y-sized A390 and coupé and drop-top versions of the next-generation electric A110 – a car that will replace its acclaimed lightweight combustion sibling, which will bow out of production later this year.
The line-up will be rounded off before the end of the decade by three more EVs, which are thought to be larger, E-segment models that Alpine will use to break into the American market.
The new A310 takes its name from a radically styled four-seat coupé from the 1970s. The company will position it as a more practical alternative to the upcoming A110 EV, in effect mirroring the relationship the 718 Cayman and the 911 have within Porsche, a brand whose success Alpine is looking to replicate.
Alpine marketing director Bruce Pillard has previously told Autocar: 'The A110 is limited in volume because it's a two-seater and we know that adding two more seats in a car will make a huge difference.'
A key selling point for the A310 will be its lightness, made possible by the new Alpine Performance Platform (APP). The scalable architecture will be used first by the A110 EV next year and has been developed exclusively for Alpine's future sports EVs. More mainstream models – such as the A290 and A390 – will use variations of platforms from the Renault Group, which owns Alpine.
Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo has claimed the APP will allow the electric A110 to be 'lighter than a comparable car with a combustion engine', despite the penalty incurred by weighty battery packs. For reference, the current A110 is one of the lightest cars in series production, at 1102kg - a billing the brand wants its cars to retain in the electric era.
Innovative power management software, in the form of active torque vectoring, will also be used to give the 'driving dynamic of a lightweight car' and counteract the dynamic penalty of a several-hundred-kilogram weight gain, said Alpine CEO Philippe Krief.
The Frenchman, known for his work as an engineer on such acclaimed sports cars as the Ferrari 458 and Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, said Alpine is committed to the A310 and its sporting rangemates remaining true to the dynamic principles that have defined the brand and the four-cylinder A110, such as agility.
Pillard said these measures are necessary to make the A310 'an icon of future sports cars' and a 'true Alpine'.
Outright performance will be another key pillar of the A310's positioning. It will adopt the same tri-motor set-up – one at the front and two at the rear – as the forthcoming A390 SUV.
Alpine's most powerful car to date is the 345bhp limited-run track-focused A110 R Ultime but its upcoming electric sports cars are likely to surpass that and be capable of far quicker 0-62mph times.
However, design boss Antony Villain said recently that Alpine's future models aren't 'about just driving straight', so the A310 is unlikely to be endowed with full-bore supercar levels of power, at least in its standard form.
Visually, the rakish A310 will adopt a similar front end to the A390. Previewed in concept form, the SUV ushers in a new era of Alpine design language, with a distinctive wraparound light bar, a sharply pointed nose and a Le Mans-inspired central fin at its rear.
Notably, the A390 also has wheels that light up blue when the car's torque vectoring is activated – a feature that could also make its way onto the A310 as Alpine seeks to explore ways of making muted electric car driving more exciting for onlookers.
However, unlike other driver-focused EVs such as the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, the A310 won't emit artificial engine noises or simulate gearchanges. Krief has previously told Autocar that Alpine's EVs should not sound like they have a combustion engine. He added: 'This is fake. This is really fake. I don't like fake things like that.'
Instead, the A310 is likely to emit a distinctive sound created from the noise the electric motor makes, as in the A290 hot hatch. 'We could find something that is not the same but [similar],' said Krief. 'It is very easy to do that.'
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