New Alpine A390 2025 review: brilliant to drive, but compromised elsewhere

Verdict

This is a car full of contrasts. In the areas that you wouldn’t expect a mid-size electric SUV to be good, the Alpine shines. It’s engaging to drive and performance is exhilarating. Yet as a commercial proposition it’s lacking in places, especially at its expected price point. If you deem these compromises acceptable, you’ll have a brilliant car to enjoy – and most probably an exclusive one at that. 

If you’re looking at the car in these pictures and struggling to get a sense of what an Alpine A390 is, you’re not the only one. Parked up in its punchy blue paintwork, the A390 GTS is very much an ‘Alpine’ in terms of its design. But this is an all-electric 4.6-metre-long crossover packing a high-performance powertrain underneath a body that’s somewhere between an SUV, a coupe, and a four-door fastback. 

The car’s technical starting point doesn’t make good reading for fans of the high-performance French brand, either. Unlike the A110 sports car, which features a bespoke all-aluminium structure and platform, the A390 shares more with the Renault Scenic and Nissan Ariya. But before we write this car off as anything more than a sheep in wolf’s clothing, let us consider that Alpine has a history of taking a relatively mundane Renault-based platform and turning it into a far more interesting proposition – just look at what it did with the A290 supermini. 

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The efforts Alpine has gone to with its A390 are quick to be felt when you read into its specification. Its electric motors are bespoke, and have been developed in-house to give the A390 the only tri-motor layout in any car for under £100,000. Its 89kWh battery is also new, unique to this model and about the right size for a car of this class. For reference, it sits just above cars like the Audi Q4 e-tron, and below the Porsche Macan Electric. 

The A390 isn’t a big car, though. It certainly doesn’t feel as chunky as other premium electric SUVs, and while the 21-inch wheels and high floor do shout ‘electric SUV’, the body doesn’t. Its silhouette is cab-forward, with a short bonnet and a high point on the roof just behind the driver’s head. By design or not, this is also a trait found in the mid-engined A110; the two have an aesthetic baseline that is aligned, if not identical. 

Alpine’s designers have given the nose some concept car-like lighting treatments, with a complex arrangement of four small daytime running-light nubs that reference the quad lights of the A110. These are joined by a lightbar that stretches between them, and there’s also a collection of smaller LED light points below for the full effect; the actual headlights are cleverly hidden in the lower intakes. 

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The side is also quite complicated, with some aggressive creases and lines that aim to hide some of the body’s bulk. But in order to give the A390 shoulders, Alpine has had to narrow the cabin, impacting space inside. The rear door handles are hidden, while the back end is finished off with yet another light bar, plus a wraparound glass screen. In the flesh it does have a dainty nature; consider it a gymnast with chunky thighs compared with the Macan EV’s sumo-wrestler shape. 

This analogy wouldn’t be too far amiss when it comes to the driving experience, either, as Alpine has been practicing some form of engineering magic in making this 2.1-tonne EV feel genuinely agile. There are a few key elements that unlock this ability, starting with that tri-motor layout. 

By having two separate electric motors mounted on the rear axle, Alpine isn’t just able to double the relative power, but it can also apportion torque to each wheel independently. Combined with the front motor, this gives the A390 GTS a maximum 463bhp. Not exactly groundbreaking for the class, but the way the Alpine can deliver this power and its extraordinarily high 808Nm torque figure is the differing factor. 

Accelerate hard out of a corner and you can feel the car lean into its outer rear wheel, not just helping with traction, but to give the car a pointy, almost oversteery feel. It’s not unlike that of a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo from the late 2000s, which used this type of augmented torque delivery to both improve traction and reduce understeer.

Some EVs have a torque-vectoring differential on the rear axle to elicit a similar effect. Both the Porsche Macan Turbo and the Polestar 3 offer those systems on a dual-motor setup, but this layout feels sharper and more responsive. Alpine quotes a 0-62mph time of 3.9 seconds, we have no reason to question this claim – it feels that fast and more, even in the streaming rain. 

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The good news is that the A390’s steering and suspension feel set up to be able to control this level of chassis augmentation. The steering is direct and linear, and feels in tune with the overall driving experience. It is a touch light and could have a little more feedback around the straight ahead, but we like how you can anticipate the levels of available grip from the front end – not unlike the A110. 

The suspension is where the two begin to differ, though. The A110’s extraordinary fluidity, which is facilitated by its ultra-lightweight body, isn’t really possible on the A390. Instead, the SUV’s suspension is firm, with its explicit task being to control the mass – something you can feel as you drive down broken back roads. However, it does have a trick or two up its sleeve. 

While stiff, there’s lots of suspension travel – not always a given on EVs – and it comes with hydraulic bumpstops that allow the engineers to make full use of that travel without worrying about bottoming out. This gives the whole car excellent composure, and the ability to shake off ruts and potholes, even on 21-inch wheels. It gives you confidence that the A390 has been set up by genuine experts, just like the A110 – it just happens to be in a very different package.

So we’ve no qualms about this car’s dynamic offering. The A390 feels lightfooted and agile in a way a Macan doesn’t, and it seems to revel in attacking challenging European roads with all the class and comprehensive competency of its sporty range-mates. But as a daily driver, things start to come undone. 

Ultimately, the A390’s cabin doesn’t have the appeal it needs to at this price point. The materials are good and the seats are superb, but lifting its entire dashboard layout from the Scenic takes away from this car’s individuality. It’s not that the screens aren’t good – the Google-based software is very easy to use, and they have plenty of toys inside for things like lap-time telemetry and driver modes. But the distinctive horizontal and vertical layouts dominate the cabin architecture; it feels like Alpine could’ve done something more special here to make the A390 feel unique.

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Range isn’t great either. Nowadays, 400 miles feels like the baseline for a car like this, yet Alpine’s only projecting a figure of between 310 and 340 miles depending on spec and wheel size. For comparison, the Porsche will do more like 380 miles, a Polestar 3 is well over 400, and BMW’s forthcoming iX3 is targeting the magic 500 miles to a charge.

Speaking of which, the Alpine’s top-up times are fine but unexceptional, with a peak speed of 190kW. That means you can expect to replenish the battery from 15 to 80 per cent in “less than” 25 minutes. Yet each and every rival mentioned above demolishes this figure, in spite of their bigger batteries. 

Space is also something of an issue in the Alpine. Up front there’s a lack of storage for small items, with only one small cupholder on the centre console and a dark, hidden space under the main console. We’d like to sit a little lower, and while we’re fans of the gear selector-controls on the centre stack, it feels crammed into a cabin whose architecture is based on a simpler model.

The rear quarters are quite tight by the standards of the class, too, with compromised head and shoulder room thanks to the sloping, narrowing roof. It’s also quite dark, with small windows and no glazed-roof option, but there are at least three seatbelts in the back, and the rear bench does fold. The boot’s less of an issue – its 530 litres of space is about what you’d expect considering its exterior dimensions 

And this brings us to the crux of its issues. The A390 makes sense as an addition to Alpine’s range. This is a more practical, five-door, company-car tax-friendly SUV that would make a great everyday companion to someone who has an A110 in the garage for the weekend, and perhaps even an A290 parked outside for urban duties. However, in the context of other cars that customers will be cross-shopping it against, there are just too many compromises that outweigh its dynamic talents. 

Alpine hasn’t released official pricing for the UK, but estimates suggest this top-spec GTS model will start from around £70,000, which is just too much. At this price the admittedly not quite as rapid Macan 4, with its more spacious interior and significant range advantage, is hard to overlook. Gaze further into the future and SUVs like the new iX3 will offer up to 500 miles for under £60k.

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