- Global debut will take place at the French Formula 1 Grand Prix
- To have Alpine’s legendary lightness for a surprisingly low-weight target for an EV
“I want to electrify Alpine to preserve its name for all eternity”. This is what Luca de Meo said shortly after his arrival at Renault Group. That statement inspired Laurent Rossi, Alpine CEO, and the brand's engineers. In less than a year, their team turned this crazy idea into a reality and, to top it all off, even removed the roof.
The A110 E-ternite is 100 per cent electric. The battery modules are identical to those of the Megane E-Tech. However, to achieve optimum weight distribution and to accommodate the twelve battery modules, it was necessary to design specific battery casings for the A110 and to adapt the internal architecture. Four modules were therefore placed at the front and eight at the rear. To meet this challenge, the engineers allowed themselves to position these modules in the space in an ‘atypical’ fashion.
Despite the addition of these twelve modules, the total weight of the Alpine A110 E-ternite remains particularly light with an increase of only 258kg, thanks to a contained mass for the battery pack (392kg). No gearbox available in-house allowed the Alpine engineers to meet the brief requirements of an efficient gearbox that’s also light and compact. A gearbox, then, was studied in-house, with the Alpine gearbox supplier, in double clutch version (DCT) with an electronic control, as on the A110 combustion engine, but with clutches dimensioned to pass high torques. The double clutch solution makes it possible to avoid a break in torque while remaining compact and light.
