Alpine A290 review

Think of the new Alpine A290 as being like the front row of a rock concert. Yes, you could enjoy much of the same experience from the seats towards the back – but for the hardcore fans who want as much excitement as possible, the front row is the place to be.

If the A290 is the front row, the quieter option is the closely related Renault 5, and while the two models share retro-futuristic looks, the A290 adds plenty of features you’d want on a hot hatch. Alpine has given it more power, wider wheel arches, bespoke tyres and, with the exception of the rear axle, entirely new underpinnings.

As Alpine’s first electric car – and the trailblazer before the entire range goes electric – the A290 has a lot to prove. So does it have what it takes to win over buyers considering, say, an Abarth 500e, a Mini Cooper Electric Sport or a Smart #1 Brabus?

That’s what we’re finding out in this review, as we test the Alpine A290 against the best electric car rivals in key areas including range, performance and comfort. Read on to find out how we rate it...

All versions of the Alpine A290 have one electric motor that drives the front wheels, but depending on which version you choose, you’ll have either 178bhp or 217bhp to play with. In both cases, that’s more than any version of the Renault 5 can offer.

We’ve yet to try the 178bhp version, but the official 0-62mph sprint of 7.4 seconds suggests it’ll be plenty fast enough for most. We have tried the most powerful GTS variant, and can vouch for the 0-62mph sprint of 6.4 seconds.

Indeed, when you put your foot down, the A290 GTS pushes you into your seat with more vigour than the Abarth 500e – although it does have a tendency to suffer from torque steer (where the car pulls to one side or another under full power).

You certainly won’t struggle to get up to motorway speeds quickly or overtake slow-moving traffic, especially if you use the Overtake button on the steering wheel. Pressing that skips the otherwise gradual and linear power delivery and instantly gives you all the A290 has to offer.

As with any hot hatch, it’s arguably more important what happens when the road gets twisty than blasting down straight roads. Being an electric car, the A290 is heavier than petrol rivals such as the Ford Focus ST so it's not quite as nimble. That said, it’s very good through a series of tight bends, controlling its weight well and suffering from very little body lean. 

Indeed, the A290 is an easy car to drive quickly, responding to your inputs very predictably and only suffering from bouts of understeer if you request full throttle mid-corner. Helping with the predictability is the steering, which in Sport mode gives you more than enough idea of what the front wheels are doing.

Then there are the brakes. Alpine has said it wants you to feel no difference when the A290 switches from regenerative braking to your physical braking inputs and vice versa. That’s something that it has done very well, with all of your inputs feeling very natural and, providing you don’t have it in its highest setting, easing off the throttle feeling more like engine braking. 

You might think the focus on performance means the car’s normal driving characteristics have been compromised, but that's not the case. You see, while the A290 is quite firm, it’s also well damped and surprisingly comfortable to drive around in. True, you will feel a bit of a thump through larger potholes at slow speeds, but otherwise it soaks up lumps and bumps with ease – and better than the Mini Cooper Electric Sport. 

It’s quite refined too, suffering from very little wind and road noise even at motorway speeds. Better still, the A290 doesn’t have any fake engine noise. Instead, you have a futuristic sound derived from the electric motor’s actual noise then edited in a studio. You can switch it off in the menu but it’s far less offensive than the annoying noise you get in the Abarth 500e. 

While the Renault 5 is available with 40kWh and 52kWh (usable capacity) battery options, only the larger battery is available in the A290, where it offers an official range of up to 226 miles in the GTS and 236 miles in the less-powerful GT. The GT's range is slightly shorter than the Smart #1 Brabus gets from its larger 62kWh battery but comfortably more than the Abarth 500e can manage.

"Considering the A290 GTS aims to be a hot hatch and is quite firm, it’s surprising how comfortable it is to drive around town, and the well-judged steering helps when threading through city streets." – Dan Jones, Senior Reviewer

You sit fairly low down inside the Alpine A290, with the door sills and centre console wrapping around you and adding to the sporty feel. What’s more, the driving position is comfortable, lining you up well with the steering wheel and pedals. There’s plenty of support from the heavily bolstered seats. 

Visibility isn’t helped by the driving position, though, and while your view out at junctions is good enough, the wide rear pillars obstruct your view out of the rear. Luckily, to make parking easier, every A290 comes with rear parking sensors and a rear-view camera as standard.

One thing we really like about the interior is that you get physical buttons to control the air conditioning. It’s something the Mini Cooper E Sport and Smart #1 Brabus miss out on and, ultimately, makes changing the A290’s settings way less distracting while you’re driving.

Every A290 comes with a 10.3in infotainment touchscreen which, as with Renault car models, uses the Google operating system. That’s a good thing because it makes it much easier to use than the systems that you’ll find in the A290’s competitors, giving you simple menus and things like Google Maps as standard.

Like in the Renault 5, the screen is easy to read and the software packed with features, including DAB radio, Bluetooth, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.

On top of that, Alpine has added some custom features to the infotainment system, giving you the option of showing in-depth telemetric data on the screen and get coaching on how to improve your driving. You can even complete challenges, from setting the best 0-62mph times (best saved for the track) to achieving certain levels of efficiency over a long drive.

There’s no doubting the A290’s showroom appeal, with the mix of colours and materials. It’s fair to say some of those materials, including the plastic on top of the dashboard, feel quite scratchy, but unless you’re going to be prodding around the interior, they're not offensive. It certainly feels leagues ahead of the MG4 XPower and as well built as the Mini Cooper Electric. 

"Like the Renault 5, it’s safe to say that the A290’s Google-based infotainment software is some of the best out there at the moment. That’s especially true of the voice control system." – Dan Jones, Senior Reviewer

While the Alpine A290 is pretty compact in its dimensions, a pair of six-footers sitting in the front won’t find themselves struggling for space. Indeed, there’s plenty of head and leg room, and enough shoulder room that you won’t be rubbing shoulders.

Front storage space is sufficient rather than impressive, with door bins that’ll swallow a small bottle of water, a space for a phone below the air-con controls and a small space in the armrest.

You feel the tight dimensions more when you’re sitting in the back. Children and smaller adults will fit back there, but anyone approaching 6ft tall will start to find that it’s pretty cramped when it comes to leg room.

In that respect, they’ll likely find that their knees are digging into the seat in front of them. In fairness it’s similar to the Abarth 500e and there’s actually more head room than in that rival.

The A290’s 326-litre boot space is the same size as in the Renault 5, meaning you should be able to fit more than you could in the Peugeot e-208 but less than in the larger MG4 EV. Either way, your weekly shopping or a couple of holiday suitcases should pose no trouble.

As with most other small cars, you can fold down the rear seatbacks in a 60/40 split when you need to carry more clobber (although this will, of course, mean turfing out rear passengers).

"If you often drive four adults around, I think you'll want to consider something other than the A290 – leg room is really tight, and more suited to children." – Dan Jones, Senior Reviewer

We're still waiting for prices for the Alpine A290 but you can expect it to cost slightly less than the Abarth 500e and around the same as the Mini Cooper E Sport if you go for the entry-level GT, rising to about the same as the 500e Turismo if you go for the top-spec GTS.

It's worth noting that petrol hot hatches such as the Ford Focus ST Edition are arguably more fun to drive and don’t cost much more than the GTS.

If you stick with the less-powerful A290 GT, you get plenty of standard kit, including 19in alloy wheels, automatic LED headlights, adaptive cruise control, automatic air conditioning, heated front seats and an EV heat pump. 

The A290 GT Premium mainly adds cosmetic upgrades. Indeed, on top of the GT’s equipment, it only really gives you bespoke exterior styling, leather on the interior, a heated steering wheel and an upgraded stereo.

At the top of the pile sits the A290 GTS. It's the version you’ll need if you’re after the sportiest A290 with the most powerful motor. It comes with lots of extra kit, including Michelin Pilot Sport 5S tyres and red brake calipers.

A maximum charging rate of 100kW means taking the A290 from 15-80% charge should take around half an hour if you use a faster public EV charger. And should you need something to power your laptop, kettle or other race day paraphernalia, the A290 includes Vehicle-To-Load capabilities, so you can use its power for things other than driving.

Neither Alpine or the A290 were included in our 2024 What Car? Reliability Survey but Renault (Alpine’s parent company) came ninth out of 31 brands, which is pretty good. The A290 comes with a three-year/60,000-mile standard warranty.

At the time of writing, the Alpine A290 hadn’t been tested for safety by the experts at Euro NCAP so we can’t say how well it’ll protect you in an accident or how it compares to its rivals. That said, every A290 comes with plenty of safety equipment, including automatic emergency braking (AEB), lane-keeping assist, reverse pedestrian warning and a driver attention monitoring system.

"Given that the A290 is a hot hatch, I'd say you’re probably best going for the GTS. Sure, it costs more and the range isn’t great, but it gets the extra power and feels sportier." – Dan Jones, Senior Reviewer

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