Alpine’s A290 Electric Hot Hatch Will Teach You To Drive Better

If you’re in the market for a hot electric vehicle, your options are pretty limited these days and don’t extent much past the Hyundai Ioniq 5N. However, French automaker Alpine has set to right this wrong with its new A290 EV, which packs 220 hp, retro good looks and a built-in coach that will make you drive better.

The A290 was first unveiled back in 2023 and bears a striking resemblance to the new Renault 5 EV, which it’s based on and shares many parts with. However, the Alpine is reportedly wider and has a longer track to help make it appeal to more performance-minded drivers.

Other factors that could draw in performance fans include the aggressive styling the A290 has over the Renault 5, its increased power, quicker zero to 60 time and the driving coach that ships with each car.

At the heart of each A290 will be a new coaching function that’s designed to teach owners “how to get to grips with your vehicle,” says Alpine in a release. To do this, the car will use its new telemetrics function to highlight areas you can improve on as a driver. As Alpine explains:

Ideal for learning at your own pace, this section introduces the basic reflexes you need to adopt when driving a sports car, such as eye tracking, trajectory control and braking techniques. As you progress, the concepts covered, such as managing drift when lifting off, become more advanced.

To put your new found talents to the test, the Alpine A290 also comes with a series of challenges designed to rest your agility, power and endurance behind the wheel. Challenges like acceleration have been designed to complete on closed roads and race tracks, while the endurance targets can be run on regular roads and highways, says the French brand.

Is this something you think you’d like in your brand new electric hot hatch? After all, we’re often told that most cars ship with more power and performance than the average driver knows what to do with, so maybe tools like this will be a good thing.

There’s no doubt, however, that the new A290 in its production-ready finish is definitely a good thing, however. The car looks awesome with its angular, retro stylings, and the Alpine flourishes on the lights and its wheel arches make the A290 really pop compared with its sibling at Renault.

What’s more, the car comes with some pretty impressive stats to back up its electric hot hatch claims. In its top-tier GT Performance and GTS guises, the Alpine A290 packs in 220 horsepower, a 52 kWh battery pack and rapid charging speeds of up to 100kW at DC charging ports.

Inside, there’s a slick interior that’s built around a 10.1-inch central screen that can share all kinds of driving data with you, such as lap times, g-forces, acceleration and even breaking performances.

It’s a neat little car and one that we’ll be very excited to see out on the road, after it already proved its cool points thrashing up the arctic tundra.