I’ve simply spent some minutes speaking to Autocar’s street testers concerning the Alpine A290, the short model of the brand new Renault 5 EV.
What’s nice is that we weren’t speaking about the place the cost port was or how far it might go or whether or not the driving force help methods had been infuriating.
As an alternative it was an old school chat about lift-off oversteer (not as a lot as in an outdated Renaultsport sizzling hatch however greater than a lot of the competitors) and whether or not it ought to have had a further steering knuckle on its MacPherson struts to scale back its torque steer (it nearly will get away with it).
They had been additionally intrigued that Alpine had left it front-wheel drive, moderately than taking any temptation, if it had any, so as to add rear-wheel drive to the combo by becoming one other motor on the again.
That’s one thing that’s “technically doable”, admitted Alpine, however solely barely reluctantly to a direct query about it, on the A290 launch occasion.
The reality is that just about something is technically doable, but it surely comes with value and complexity, and moreover, Alpine remains to be a fan, it professes, of light-weight automobiles.
And if an electrical automobile can’t be as gentle, not less than not but, as a equally sized and powered combustion-engined automobile, Alpine can do issues with management weights and suspension response to not less than make it really feel lighter than any of the competitors.
The near-1500kg A290 is weighty by ICE automobile requirements for a sub-four-metre-long hatch, however within the larger scheme of recent EVs, it’s actually not a lot.
Deciding that it ought to have the identical 52kWh battery dimension because the common 5 and preserve front-wheel drive solely might need simply been a budgetary choice, however I believe it’s additionally a smart one from a dynamic perspective.
As our Illya Verpraet simply mentioned to me, in the event you discover an EV that gives a alternative of two- or four-wheel drive, it’s nearly a certainty that the 2WD model drives higher.
I’ve thought and mentioned it of the Porsche Taycan and the Volvo EX30: the rear-driven, single-motor variants trip extra deftly and steer extra sweetly and with extra agility than the pokier dual-motor counterparts.
Anyway, I’m simply happy to discover a new automobile that talks to lovers in the way in which we had been used to speaking about automobiles. The A290 is a new-tech automobile with an old-school really feel.
