The gasoline-powered Alpine A110 has taken its final bow. After eight years in production and 28,701 examples built, the lightweight French coupe has officially rolled off the assembly line in Dieppe for the last time, bringing the second-generation model to a close. But Alpine isn’t letting its most celebrated nameplate fade into history.
Instead, it’s reinventing it.
Meet the A110 Future—a development prototype that previews the third-generation A110 due to arrive in 2027. While it wears familiar bodywork, this isn’t simply yesterday’s sports car with a battery stuffed where the engine used to live. Underneath, Alpine has started with a clean sheet of paper, developing an entirely new electric sports car around its dedicated Alpine Performance Platform (APP).
And unlike many manufacturers making the leap to electrification, Alpine insists it isn’t willing to sacrifice the characteristics that made the A110 such a standout in the first place.
At first glance, the prototype doesn’t appear radically different from the outgoing coupe. That’s intentional. Like many early test mules, it combines existing body panels with new hardware hidden beneath. Look closer, though, and the changes become obvious. Wider fenders hint at substantially broader front and rear tracks, while the familiar rear-mounted 1.8-liter turbocharged four-cylinder—an engine whose roots trace back to the Renault Megane RS—has disappeared entirely.
In its place are two electric motors driving the rear wheels.
Keeping rear-wheel drive rather than adopting the increasingly common all-wheel-drive layout suggests Alpine remains committed to preserving the playful handling balance that has defined the A110 since its revival in 2017. The dual-motor setup promises significantly more torque than the outgoing gasoline model, although Alpine has yet to reveal power figures.
The real engineering story, however, lies beneath the floor.
Rather than installing a conventional skateboard battery stretching from axle to axle, Alpine has developed a split battery arrangement positioned toward the rear of the chassis. The goal is to achieve a 40:60 front-to-rear weight distribution, helping the electric coupe maintain the agility expected of a proper driver’s car.
Weight, of course, remains the elephant in every EV sports car discussion.
The outgoing A110 tipped the scales at just 1,102 kilograms (2,430 pounds), making it one of the lightest sports cars on sale. Matching that figure with a battery-powered replacement borders on impossible, but Alpine appears determined to keep the increase under control. The company says the battery uses high-energy-density cells combined with a cell-to-pack design that integrates the cells directly into the battery structure, reducing unnecessary mass and improving packaging efficiency.
The platform itself also relies heavily on aluminum, while an all-aluminum suspension is designed to trim every unnecessary kilogram.
Efficiency has received equal attention. Alpine confirms the A110 Future uses a silicon carbide (SiC) inverter, allowing greater power density while reducing electrical losses and weight. An 800-volt electrical architecture also forms part of the package, promising the kind of ultra-fast DC charging increasingly becoming standard among high-performance EVs.
If Alpine’s engineering ambitions sound lofty, its marketing claims go even further.
The company describes the upcoming A110 as “the world’s first true electric sports car” and says it will possess everything necessary to outperform today’s finest internal-combustion sports cars. Those are bold promises in a segment populated by machines with decades of development behind them, but Alpine has built its reputation on prioritizing handling finesse over outright horsepower.
If it can translate that philosophy into the electric era, the new A110 could become one of the few EVs that enthusiasts genuinely want to drive rather than simply admire on a specification sheet.
The production model remains several years away, and Alpine continues to keep most of the technical details under wraps. Exact output, battery capacity, driving range, acceleration figures, and curb weight all remain unanswered questions.
Still, the direction is becoming clear.
The next A110 won’t attempt to imitate its predecessor by pretending batteries don’t exist. Instead, Alpine is embracing electrification while engineering around its biggest compromises. Rear-wheel drive, careful weight distribution, lightweight materials, and chassis-first development suggest the company understands that sports cars are defined by feel as much as speed.
The A110 Future will make its public debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed next week before evolving into the production model scheduled to reach customers in 2027. Beyond that, Alpine has already confirmed plans for a larger 2+2 electric sports coupe that will revive the A310 name for the first time since 1984.
For a company built on lightweight driving machines, the electric era represents its biggest challenge yet. Whether the next A110 becomes the benchmark Alpine promises remains to be seen—but at least it appears determined to tackle that challenge on its own terms.
Source: Alpine