Alpine has released details of an all-electric version of its flagship sports coupe, the A110 E-ternité. According to the company, its mandate was simple: electrify the A110 and match the performance, balance and agility of the Alpine A110 combustion-engine car while capitalizing on the Renault Group’s strengths, experience and technologies.
Unsurprisingly, the electric A110 uses a host of shared parts from other Renault EVs. For example, the battery modules are identical to those of the 100% electric Mégane E-Tech. However, to achieve optimum weight distribution and accommodate the 12 battery modules (with a total 60kWh capacity), it was necessary to design specific battery casings for the A110 and adapt the internal architecture. The final version sees four modules placed at the front and eight at the rear. Impressively, and despite the addition of the battery modules, the total weight of the Alpine A110 E-ternité is only 258kg more than the ICE version (1,378kg vs 1,120kg), with the battery pack coming in at 392kg.
To avoid an acceleration vs top-speed trade-off, a gearbox has been added to the 178kW electric motor. The transmission was developed in-house and is based on a revised version of the DCT fitted to the ICE A110, using larger clutches to handle the additional torque of the electric motor.
Alpine says that the car mixes two electronic equipment architectures separated by 10 years. This enabled the features of the combustion engine AS1 to be kept while adding new features from the EV sector, with a dedicated ECU used to ensure communication between the two systems.
