Alpine A390 prototype 2025 review – the electric Porsche Macan has competition
The Alpine brand is going all-electric in 2026, with the A390 crossover set to take on Porsche’s Macan EV. We sample a prototype
We knew it was coming, but it’s now confirmed that the Alpine A110 will no longer be produced from the start of next year. This move will make Alpine an electric-only brand, but with the Renault 5-based A290 hatch being its first and only EV, it’s time it launched another. That’s where the A390 comes in, first previewed in 2024 as a crossover to rival the electric Porsche Macan, and now just a few months away from its market launch. We’ve spent some time behind the wheel of a production prototype in Swedish Lapland.
Set to be unveiled in full on 27 May, the keen-eyed will recognise that date as Alpine’s birthday, with the A390 launch coinciding with its 70th anniversary. While its crossover form factor might suggest otherwise, this is a significant car for Alpine, and one that it sees as its next flagship once the A110 meets its end. As worrying as this may sound to those who admire Alpine’s core values, it shouldn’t be this way for long.
> Alpine A290 GTS 2025 review – is the Renault 5 relative a true hot hatch?
Alpine is keen to stress that it’s building two distinct product lines going forward: Lifestyle and Icon. The A290 and its larger A390 relative fall into the former as more usable, accessible cars with a performance edge, with Icon reserved for ground-up driver’s cars – the A110 we know and love falls into this category, with its electric replacement destined for this product line.
As important as it is for Alpine to sell a true sports car to cater to its core audience, Alpine sees the A390 as a way to drastically increase sales volume and generate cash by introducing fresh customers to the brand – a bit like Porsche did with the first Cayenne all those years ago.
The A290 charmed us with its design and accessible performance, but there’s no escaping the fact that it lacks many of the key performance traits we seek in a driver’s car, and certainly one with an Alpine badge. Now it’s time to find out if a more serious EV can do any better.
Powertrain and performance
With its final reveal still a few months away and these late-stage prototypes still clad in camouflage, we don’t have final performance numbers just yet. What we do know is that while the A290 makes do with a single motor on the front axle, the A390 adopts three in total, with two at the rear for rear-biased power distribution and one on the front to make it all-wheel drive.
Alpine says this was far from easy to execute, as while the underlying AmpR medium platform is shared with an existing performance EV, the 429bhp Nissan Ariya Nismo, that car features just two motors. Alpine therefore had to work its packaging magic to shoehorn that extra motor into the rear, but on first impressions, we think it was well worth the hassle.
While we’re yet to assess the A390’s performance in the UK (or conventional tarmac for that matter), it’s immediately clear that this is a much more serious performer than the smaller A290. Once its 245-section studded tyres find purchase, it pushes you into the seat like a true performance car – Alpine says its straight line performance is equivalent to an A110 R, and we believe it. It certainly feels like it should more than exceed the 443lb ft figure of the dual-motor Nissan Ariya Nismo too.
The benefit of those dual rear motors goes beyond just speed, with true torque vectoring also unlocked to allow for much more adjustable handling. With such low grip on ice, the benefits are immediately clear. Carefully manage entry speed to find front-end purchase, tap the throttle to initiate oversteer, and the A390 is wonderfully easy to adjust on the throttle, helping to manage its presumably huge, but as-yet undisclosed weight figure (likely in the region of 2000kg) even in these extreme conditions.
Carried across from the A290 hatch is the ‘OV’ overtake boost button on the steering wheel and ‘RCH’ regen adjustment dial, with Normal and Sport drive modes also familiar. What’s new for the A390 is a dedicated ‘Track’ mode, almost entirely releasing the ESC constraints and allowing for near full control of power. Even on ice, the stability and traction control systems rarely intervene unless you request significant wheel overspeed – if that’s what you’re looking for, ESC can be fully turned off. It’ll even do donuts within its own length if you wish…
Ride and handling
The low limits of a frozen lake make it difficult to assess fine handling characteristics, but based on our limited test, the A390 gets a lot right. While it is said to change depending on the drive mode, the steering is relatively light and lacking feedback in each one, but the A390 communicates traction loss and changes in weight distribution through the seat to give you a good picture of what’s happening beneath you.
Key to this is near-perfect 49:51 front to rear weight distribution, a low centre of gravity thanks to a new floor mounted battery pack, and specific Alpine suspension with a widened track – Alpine’s engineers also worked to keep the wheelbase as short as possible for improved agility. The A390 doesn’t feel like a car that weighs almost twice as much as an A110, with its weight rarely making itself known. The occasional overexuberant slide might continue for a fraction longer than you anticipated due to the mass at play, but it never feels unmanageable.
While Normal and Sport modes significantly restrict wheel spin, unusually, even the most cautious of modes still allows for a reasonable amount of lift-off oversteer, making it easier to pitch into corners and more engaging than it would be otherwise – where many cars would frantically grab the brakes to bring things back in line, the A390’s systems quietly work away in the background.
Design
We can only see so much of its design through the camouflage wrap on these prototypes, but references to other models in its current lineup are clear to see. Those Le Mans Hypercar-esque ‘cosmic dust’ daytime running lights have been carried across from the concept, along with a slim full-width light bar and a unique sculpted bonnet referencing that of the A110. Unlike the A110 though, the A390 features pass-throughs for aero purposes, improving efficiency and its looks – this is a similar design to that seen on the Polestar 3, although the Alpine makes much more of an event of this feature.
Price, specs and rivals
There are very few direct rivals to the Alpine A390, but the Porsche Macan EV is the closest. Starting from £68,500 and with 355bhp in its most basic trim, it doesn’t provide an awful lot of performance for the money, with the 510bhp Macan 4S Electric likely the closest in performance to the Alpine A390 for £76,900 – regardless of the value proposition, it’s a car that most will cross-shop with the Alpine.
Elsewhere in the market there’s the 641bhp Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, our favourite driver’s EV to date and a serious performer on the road and track. This is likely to sit just ahead of the A390 in terms of performance and cost though, with pricing starting from £65,000.