Driving ambition

Waiting at a red light is a rather dull occasion – but not if you’re at the wheel of an Alpine a110 R and it happens to be playtime for the children in a nearby schoolyard. Then it becomes a moment of happy pandemonium, as excited faces swarm the fences and thrilled shrieks fill the air. As monocle experienced on a recent drive just outside Paris, little can diminish the thrill of driving this diminutive sports car.

Alpine has been part of Renault since 1973 and is best known for its achievements in 1960s and 1970s motor racing. After remaining dormant for more than a decade, it was revived with a concept car in 2012; this led to the launch of the a110 “berlinette” five years later, attracting plenty of buzz. Then, in 2021, Renault rebranded its Formula 1 team as Alpine. With the release of a slew of limited editions and faster variants, commercial success was assured: Alpine sold 4,328 a110s in 2023, making it the bestselling two-seater sports car in Europe.

With the EU’s effective ban on new combustion-engine cars coming into effect in 2035, Alpine is now embarking on a major transformation. By the end of the decade, it hopes to offer a full range of electric vehicles (EVs) and reach revenues of €8bn. This expansion began with the unveiling of the Alpine a290 last summer – a sporty riff on the Renault 5 that will start deliveries in early 2025. At the latest Paris Motor Show, Alpine’s ceo, Philippe Krief, set out the next steps of his plan, previewing the Alpine a390 Beta concept car, an electric suv. Here, he tells monocle about the road ahead. — L

Tell us about this new era for Alpine.
Our plan is to make six or seven vehicles by 2030, with an expansion into Asia and the US. We’ll have about one new car per year and the models will fall into two pillars. The first is that of two-seater sports cars, such as the a110 – maybe a two-plus-two-seater too. The other will be cars designed more for everyday use but still linked to the brand in terms of sportiness, exclusivity and strong design. The a290, the a390 and probably a future third car will fall into that pillar.

What guides you as you evolve into a global, all-electric brand?
When you know where you come from, you know where you’re going. Alpine’s founder, Jean Rédélé, was one of the only creators of great automotive brands not to name his company after himself. He called it Alpine to express the feeling of driving along winding roads in the Alps. All of our models have exuded this feeling of lightness, this pleasure, this simplicity of driving. On the other hand, if we want to establish ourselves in a robust, lasting way on the market, we have to increase our penetration a little bit, in terms of customers and markets. The key is to transcribe our dna into all of our vehicles, especially those with broader appeal, and sprinkle them with French know-how, elegance, exclusivity and luxury.

What are the key challenges when it comes to creating a battery-powered vehicle that invokes all of these things?
A sports car is a car that responds well to all of the inputs of the steering wheel, accelerator and gearbox, and gives you a certain acoustic emotion. Electric technology ticks a few of those boxes but there are lingering questions about response time, lightness and acoustics. When it comes to response time, it’s possible to give an EV a completely natural behaviour through the integration of batteries low enough on the car to bring down the center of mass, and so on. The a390 that we are developing demonstrates this: it will have three motors, one at the front and two at the back. We have proof that we can give the perception of lightness despite the weight of the batteries.

The second aspect is the acoustics. Simply reproducing the sound of a combustion engine would be easy but that would amount to a refusal to enter this new era. The objective is to make the harmonics of the electric motor audible, so that you can sense the car’s behaviour through its sonic feedback.

As you expand into a global brand, will you stick to your model of producing all of your vehicles in France?
We will take it step by step. The a290 is produced in Douai; the a390 will be produced in Dieppe, just like the a110. So, for the moment, we are in France, both in terms of production and development. But we’re in the process of expanding our network all over Europe. We will tackle Asia too and distribute our cars there less discreetly than we do today. We sell the a110 R in Japan but it’s still quite limited.

How does motorsport fit into Alpine’s new plans?
It remains important to us. Alpine’s dna is motor racing. It’s also a key brand vector and we use motorsport to make ourselves better known. Plus, it’s one of Alpine’s roles in the Renault Group to be at the vanguard when it comes to innovative technologies.

You’re the CEO of Alpine but also the technical director of the Renault Group. How do you see the role of software in the automotive industry?
The software revolution is, above all, a hardware revolution. Ever smaller and more capable microprocessors have made it possible to integrate supercomputers into vehicles. About 10 years ago, there were 60 to 70 “little brains” inside a vehicle. Today we have three or four – even small supercomputers that manage everything. So we can be more responsive when we make a modification and be completely in control of what happens. Controlling three motors on a car almost in real time to make its behaviour smoother is no longer science fiction. That’s how we’ll ensure that a bigger car can offer the same feeling of lightness as an a110.

Car enthusiasts can be sceptical about technical innovations. How will you convince them to go electric?
We won’t force them. A few years ago, steering on cars was manual, so there was no assistance on the steering. When we switched to hydraulic power steering, there was pushback. But after a short while, it was over. Then we moved on to electric power steering. Again, people said, “Oh là là.” Now few still complain about it, as we kept the advantages of the old technology but added something. Here, it’s the same thing: we’ll keep the advantages of a sports car but add the more serene atmosphere of an electric car. And we’ll add performance that is incredible because the power density of an electric motor means that it uses less space and has much more force. Even the enthusiasts will appreciate it.