Alpine offered a first look at its new high-performance electric sports car at the 2026 Goodwood Festival of Speed last weekend – all thanks to a pioneering new process for developing a new car platform.
The French company is calling its forthcoming third generation A110 ‘the world’s first true EV sports car’ – a claim that’s sure to spark debate, not least among fans of Tesla, Porsche, Ferrari and Maserati.
But one thing is unique about the ‘Alpine A110 Future’ prototype that sped up Goodwood’s famous hill, driven by Alpine Formula One driver Pierre Gasly: the cost-effective and rapid way it has been developed.
Design Alpine
Across the industry, creating a whole new bespoke auto platform has become so expensive and resource-sapping that even the world’s biggest brands now think twice before investing in it.
Yet Alpine’s new architecture has been developed entirely without building expensive prototypes and refining them with any track testing until this point. This is due to importing a strategy from the F1 world, where there are limits on track testing prototypes in advance of races.
That’s why Alpine has logged more than 45,000 km (28,000 miles) of virtual development using its state-of-the-art DiM250 driver-in-the-loop simulator. This allowed the performance marque to skip costly initial physical prototypes entirely and shave six months off the development schedule for its highly anticipated next-generation A110 platform.
The simulator is built around a real Alpine A110 cabin to maintain exact driver ergonomics and has six-way motion to fine-tune chassis and suspension dynamics, and mimic road surface vibrations. It uses a huge nine-meter conical screen to provide simulated field of view for test drivers.
In traditional car manufacturing, skipping physical prototypes for 45,000 km of testing is practically unheard of. Alpine has been able to skip building any expensive, hand-built mules to test if the basic layout works. Incredibly, the Goodwood debut was the first physical version of the car. Every trial-and-error adjustment, rectified mistake and engineering adjustment before that moment had happened entirely on a computer screen.
Design Alpine
Alpine pulled this strategy straight out of Formula 1, where strict racing rules ban teams from testing physical cars on real tracks for most of the year. Because of this, racing teams have mastered the art of building and testing cars 100% digitally before manufacturing them. Alpine took that Formula 1 discipline and applied it to a road-legal electric sports car.
However, there wasn’t a lot of detail given to the press about the Alpine A110 Future that appeared at Goodwood. What is known is that the new platform is designed around two battery packs for ideal weight distribution and to keep the roofline low. The main power pack is behind the driver like in a classic mid-engined coupe, with a smaller pack in the nose giving a 40:60 front/rear weight distribution. High energy density cells reduce weight and charging time.
The new car uses in-wheel motors, enabling precise management by sophisticated torque vectoring to alter power left and right every 10 milliseconds. This targets an optimum blend of performance and traction.
A state-of-the-art silicon carbide inverter in the rear axle converts DC battery power to AC for the motors and manages the motors’ performance, regenerative ability and thermal activity.
Total weight is expected to be reduced to around that of an equivalent petrol sports car while maintaining a battery range of at least more than 560 km (350 miles).
Alpine UK/Tony Cornelius
The new extruded aluminum platform will be the cornerstone of the Renault Group’s attempt to take Alpine’s F1 pedigree to grow the brand into a multi-model premium carmaker, France’s answer to Porsche. The Goodwood prototype was a two-seater coupe. A soft-top roadster, all-wheel-drive variant and 2+2 are rumored to be following. The platform is also able to accommodate hybrid powertrains.
“It was great to be amongst the first to drive the future of Alpine with my run up the Goodwood Hill,” Pierre Gasly told the world’s press. “Alpine continues to show that an electric sports car can be lighter, sharper and really enjoyable to drive. I am certainly excited to see what the future holds.”
After the Goodwood glimpse, a full unveiling is expected at the Paris Motor Show in October, with cars potentially on sale next year.
Source: Alpine
