The EV 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.
