Oft-compared to Lotus, the Alpine brand has drifted in and out of focus over the years despite seven decades of idiosyncratic road cars and regular motorsport success. It’s currently in Formula One and the World Endurance Championship, and its A110 sports car is a masterpiece of lightweight analogue driving entertainment. No slouches, then.

On top of all this, a global expansion of Alpine is planned, too, seeing the brand enter new markets, including the US, where it’s expected to launch a three-car electric lineup in 2027.

For now, as the future is electric, the requirement for greater global awareness rests with the A390. It’s an unusual proposition, on the face of it—a genuine five-door sports coupe that builds out on the design attributes that made the A110 so much more than a retro pastiche. You can see the connection in the side profile and shoulders, although the front end’s air curtains and bonnet blades have a model-specific aero functionality.

We’re less sure about the triangles etched into the nose (Alpine names them, quite unforgivably, “cosmic dust” for some reason), or the snowflake-aping alloy wheel design. Overall, though, it’s individual (Alpine is calling it a “race car in a suit”), and that’s a win given the soul-crushingly generic nature of so many new EVs.

The A390’s electric motors are manufactured in a dedicated facility in Cléon, the NMC batteries sourced from a company called Verkor, but with modules produced in Dunkirk and assembled in the Renault Group facility in Douai. The chassis, meanwhile, was designed and built at the company’s Le Mans plant.

As with the smaller A290 and indeed with various Renaults (the 4, 5 and incoming Twingo), this is an EV for the committed Francophile. Alpine isn’t just leveraging its quirky past, it’s an avatar for the wider Group’s technical prowess.

The platform is an evolution of the AmpR Medium architecture that’s already in service beneath the Megane E-Tech and Scenic, and Nissan’s Arya and Leaf, a necessary synergy given the vast cost of developing these things. But some notable lengths have been gone to here in order to differentiate the A390 and justify the investment and Porsche-baiting aspirations.

“The driving force behind the A390’s dynamics was to make it as fast and agile as the A110,” Vehicle Projects VP Robert Bonetto says. “To achieve this, we had to eliminate the impact of the battery’s weight with a technical solution to enhance the perceived lightness.”

“Perceived” being the key word here. The A110 is beloved of diehard car fans because it only weighs 1,140 kg, a stellar achievement in this day and age. The A390 is approximately twice that, unavoidable given its mode of propulsion, but sticks as close as possible to Alpine’s primary recipe. The 89 kWh battery uses a new chemistry and cooling system for more sustained power and performance, and more efficient charging and discharging.

The A390 is also unique in this segment by having three motors, a coil one on the front axle and two permanent synchronous ones on each of the rear wheels, for a total power output of 396 bhp in GT guise, rising to 463 bhp in GTS form.

That’s enabled the engineers to deliver independent wheel control at the rear, and to sharpen the dynamics and obviate the car’s weight via active torque vectoring. That varies the amount of slip at each wheel and adjusts the amount of torque right to left to optimize handling responses. There’s an additional torque split with the front motor, too.

This is clever stuff, backed up by Alpine’s decision to use passive damping in its suspension rather than an adaptive, multi-mode system that adds weight, cost and complexity. Nor is there four-wheel steering or active anti-roll, hi-tech tricks generally used to atone for dynamic failings. This is the sort of confident thinking you’d hope for from a company steeped in motorsport, and run by a former Ferrari R&D boss (Philippe Krief, although he’s French not Italian) with some of the Prancing Horse’s greatest modern hits on his CV.

Despite the undeniable element of cost-saving here, the result is an EV whose handling and ride are satisfyingly pure whilst feeling grown-up and expensively engineered. Although Alpine insists it’s a fastback rather than a quasi-SUV, you sit high enough to seed doubts about a compromised center of gravity, despite the batteries’ skateboard configuration. Yet the A390 moves with a grace and fluidity that confirms that the same people who worked wonders on the lissom mid-engined A110 coupe have delivered the goods here, too.

Only the GT was available to test, but it’s easily fast enough for most drivers, 0 to 62 mph taking 4.8 seconds, the punchy mid-range a more useful everyday metric. Five drive modes are available, including a Sport and Track set-up that allows the driver to reconfigure steering effort, throttle response, and the aggressiveness of the torque vectoring. A Live Data graphic on the central display allows you to see exactly what each wheel is contending with in specific moments, up to and including a little oversteer, if that’s your bag. Although, if you are going sideways, it won’t be the data display you’ll be looking at.

Mostly, the A390’s torque vectoring wants to sharpen the front end and neutralize the rear, and the upshot is a car of less extrovert behaviour but more polished overall dynamics than the highly amusing Hyundai Ioniq 5 N. The brakes are good, too, a blue rotary dial on the steering wheel offering levels of regen up to one-pedal operation. There’s also a red “boost” button for an extra slug of power or when using launch control. It’s that or your right foot.

Inside, the kinship with the Megane E-Tech is apparent, though the A390 does its best to hide it with a variety of tactile materials including Alcantara and Nappa leather. The instrument display is configurable and dense with info, as is the central touchscreen whose menus are nonetheless easy to navigate. A page of telematics and coaching software underscores the Alpine’s racy mien, and there’s also a terrific audio system from French specialist, Devialet.

Some of the parts bin switchgear, however, feels a little clunky and old-fashioned. But at least it’s still physically there, and Alpine hasn’t migrated everything to the touchscreen. As with the drive modes, the ADAS settings can be personalized and saved. It’s a neat solution. Less so the rear accommodation, hurt by the high seating position and low roofline.

The A390 features bi-directional charging, which is becoming more commonplace but still retains an air of novelty. So it delivers vehicle-to-load (V2L) charging as standard, enabling you to charge the e-bike which is the likeliest accompaniment to the A390, given Alpine’s high-ish level lifestyle aspirations.

Assuming you have the appropriate home charger, it also offers vehicle-to-grid compatibility, so you can buy cheaper rate power at night, store it and sell it back to the grid. Renault’s Mobilize division has been working on this for a while for UK customers; it should happen in 2026, but it’s available in other markets already.

Peak rapid charging is 190 kW for the GTS (150 kW for the GT, due to differing battery chemistry), which is good if not outstanding. Alpine insists that maintaining a high charging power for longer periods is just as significant. The A390 will charge from 10 to 80 percent in less than 25 minutes, and you can manually set the battery to pre-heat.

Google Maps navigation includes an EV route planner, which helps reduce the stress of a longer journey by considering all the major variables: route, charge level, battery temperature, and real-time consumption. Alpine claims 325 miles range on the WLTP standard for the GTS, 340 for the GT. WIRED saw around 2.9 miles per kWh, but that was during enthusiastic driving. Expect around 290 miles real world in the GT.

Prices are yet to be fixed, but the A390 GT is likely to start at around £60,000 in the UK, £70,000 for the GTS. That drops it directly into territory patrolled very effectively by the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, Polestar 4 and Porsche Macan, among others. But in addition to useful tech and its undoubted handling smarts, the A390 also locates something that’s rarer than it should be in the fast-evolving EV world: real character.