Alpine Killed Its 1,102-Kilo Sports Car. The Electric One Targets 1,450 kg — and Keeps a Petrol Escape Hatch.

01

The Reveal Was a Statue

Paris, September 28. Alpine’s big moment for the most important car in its modern history was not a car. It was a full-size sculpture — the new A110’s proportions under a draped blue veil, floating off the ground, styled, design chief Antony Villain said, after Concorde at the moment it breaks the sound barrier. Formula 1 driver Pierre Gasly helped pull the metaphorical covers off a car that stayed literally covered.

Read it as stalling if you like. But a sculpture is also a promise about shape, and the shape is specific: a V-shaped “shark” nose, a teardrop cabin, four pronounced wheel arches — and, critically, a roofline at essentially the same height as the current car, around 1.25 metres. In an era when electric cars grow tall to hide their batteries, Alpine put a full-size silhouette in Paris and bet the proportions would do the talking.

One fight is already over, and the traditionalists lost it. The A110’s quad round headlights — the face the car has worn since 1962 — are gone, replaced by hexagonal light units under a ribbed bonnet. The consolation, and it is a real one: the arrangement survives. Two light units per side, a modernised nod to the four-lamp face rather than a literal recreation. The shape of the lamps changed. The count didn’t. Decide for yourself whether that’s evolution or surrender — the comments section is open.

For context, Paris also got the A310 Vision, a one-off concept reinterpreting the 1971 A310 on the same new platform. It is a design study, not the production 2+2 that’s planned from 2028 — anyone telling you it’s the next A310 is selling you a headline.

02

The Battery Is in Two Pieces

Here is the engineering decision the whole car hangs on. Every mainstream EV sits on a skateboard: one flat battery slab under the floor, which forces the seats — and therefore the roof — upward. Alpine refused. The new Alpine Performance Platform, a bespoke bonded-aluminium architecture with a high-pressure die-cast battery casing, splits the pack: roughly 25 percent ahead of the driver, 75 percent behind. A cell-to-pack, 800-volt layout with no module middlemen.

Philippe Krief’s explanation to Autocar was disarmingly simple: the split pack “lets the electric A110 sit as low as the petrol car.” The driver sits in the car, not on it. Weight distribution is targeted at 40:60 front to rear — rear-biased, like a proper mid-engined car, which is what the packaging mimics: the rear battery sits roughly where the petrol engine used to live.

Charging claims are equally un-EV-like in their ambition: 10 to 80 percent in under 15 minutes, Alpine says, with 400-volt boost charging alongside the 800-volt system. One honest blank: capacity. Alpine has confirmed nothing. A single French report — L’Automobile Magazine — claims 71.2 kWh gross with cells from Gotion High-Tech. One source is not a spec, so on this site it stays labelled unconfirmed until Alpine says it out loud.

03

The Weight Audit

Everything about this car is downstream of one number, so let’s audit it properly. The petrol A110 weighed 1,102 kg in base DIN form — the lightest sports car of its generation, the entire point of the car. The electric one targets 1,450 kg, per Krief himself, with an Alpine promise to land under 1,500. That is roughly 300 to 350 kilos of added mass, and no amount of French charm changes the arithmetic.

Two asterisks, both load-bearing. First, L’Automobile reports the 1,450–1,500 kg target has not yet been met — targets are not homologation sheets. Second, Krief is simultaneously quoting 600 km (373 miles) of WLTP range, with the reasoning that “customers won’t accept the easy trade-off of a small battery.” Those two ambitions — 1,450 kilos and 600 kilometres — are in a knife fight with each other. Every kilometre of range is paid for in kilograms. Something has to give, and what gives will define the car.

Context, though, because the audit cuts both ways. If Alpine lands anywhere near 1,450 kg, the A110 will weigh some 450 kg less than an MG Cyberster — currently the lightest electric sports car actually on sale, at around 1.9 tonnes. The field isn’t close. The question was never whether the EV would be heavier than the petrol car. Physics settled that. The question is whether 1,450 is real — and Alpine has been unusually willing to say the number out loud, which means it can be held to it.

04

Two Motors and a 10-Millisecond Referee

The hardware, where it’s confirmed, is the right hardware. Two electric motors at the rear, one per wheel, in a three-in-one e-axle — rear-wheel drive, with the platform also able to support all-wheel drive for bigger siblings. The motors are permanent-magnet units spinning to 21,500 rpm, fed by silicon-carbide inverters, and they generate their own sound. Suspension is double wishbones all round — carried over in philosophy and in fact from the petrol car, in an era when most EVs get struts and an apology.

The referee between the two rear motors is Active Torque Vectoring 2.0, reallocating torque every 10 milliseconds, working with wheel-slip torque control under a central brain Alpine calls the Dynamic Model, which coordinates motors, battery, brakes, steering and aero. On paper, that is the correct shopping list for making 1,450-plus kilos rotate like less.

And this is not a slide deck. The platform has already run: a development mule — new hardware under stretched current-generation bodywork — made its dynamic debut at Goodwood in July, driven up the hill by Gasly. What Alpine has not given anyone is a power figure. Reporting from Les Alpinistes puts the aim above 450 bhp; Krief would only say there’s “plenty — more than enough,” and that the 345 bhp R Ultime, the petrol car’s swansong, “will be comfortably eclipsed.” The 300-to-500 hp range floating around social media is exactly that — floating. It isn’t here.

05

The Petrol Escape Hatch

Now the strangest, most honest fact in the modern car industry. Krief again, to Autocar: “Before you ask, yes — the platform is designed to accommodate an internal combustion engine.” The electric A110’s bespoke platform can take petrol. The packaging gives it away: that rear battery sits where an engine used to, and an engine could sit there again. A decision is due by the end of 2026; if it’s yes, a petrol or hybrid A110 follows roughly two years later.

Read the hedge two ways. The cynical read: Alpine doesn’t believe its own EV case. The fairer read: Alpine has looked at the same market as Porsche — whose electric 718 programme has slipped and slipped — and built optionality into the metal instead of the press release. The platform is also planned to serve at least two generations of A110, be joined by the first A110 roadster in history, and has been through US crash testing as part of a market evaluation. Evaluation, note: there is no US decision, and Alpine’s wider American plans are frozen. Believe an American A110 when it’s announced, not before.

Timeline, pinned down: the full reveal happens in 2027. Alpine says the car is due at the end of 2027; L’Automobile expects first sales to slip into early 2028. The press estimate for price is around £60,000 to start, against £55,000 for the last petrol cars — an estimate, labelled as such, until Alpine publishes a number.