Finally, a proper EV hot hatch? My winter fling with the Alpine A290

The elephant in the room, though, is the inevitable impact the power boost has had on range and efficiency. Whereas the standard car can officially squeeze up to 252 miles out of its 52kWh battery, its more potent relation slashes that figure to just 226 miles.

And having taken delivery a couple of weeks ago, I'm quickly learning that the real-world figure is some way off the WLTP fantasy – but more on that later.

My car is a top-of-the-line GTS, meaning it has the more powerful of the two available motors (making 217bhp), all the bells and whistles and a pricey two-tone paint scheme, which has already proved plenty loud enough to compensate for the lack of any engine sound, judging by the stares it attracts.

All in, it cost £38,600, which is roughly where prices start for the similarly conceived but larger Abarth 600e and a couple of grand less than the Volkswagen Golf GTI, which is probably its closest petrol-powered equivalent.

Since it arrived, though, the A290 has become eligible for the maximum £3750 discount under the UK government's Electric Car Grant scheme and Alpine has fettled the price list slightly, so you would now pay a slightly more reasonable £34,245 for the same spec. (The blue and-black livery is now standard, along with a new one-pedal mode.)

It still seems a punchy outlay for a car that counts a scarcely usable back seat among its fairly glaring utility shortcomings, but let's see if it can compensate for that with some scintillating dynamics and dazzling pace. I should have a good giggle finding out, either way, but two things are giving me particular cause for concern.

One is that we're amid the coldest period of the year, and all evidence suggests I will be lucky to go much farther than 110 miles on the motorway when the mercury hits zero.

Having just spent a few very relaxing months behind the wheel of a big-battery Skoda Elroq, capable of nearly 300 miles on a charge, I've become a bit complacent about EV route planning and need to adjust my mindset again to ensure I'm not caught short with a flat battery.

Especially as the A290 can't charge particularly quickly, so there's not much scope for an emergency zap-and-dash if I'm ever running short on time and juice. The second – and more aggravating – issue is that I recently obtained the coffee machine of my dreams: it's the size of my living room, looks like something you might see in a Formula 1 pit garage and makes the creamiest, smoothest Americano you ever did see.

I'm thrilled at the prospect of having a piping hot, freshly roasted home brew to hand on my regular motorway schleps, and I can't wait to use it. But I will have to wait a few months, because for some strange reason Alpine saw fit to remove the 5's cupholders in the name of creating a more driver-focused environment.

So until I learn to drive completely one handed, there's no way of enjoying a hot drink in here – expensive Guatemalan beans or not. I've got plenty of time lingering about at service stations to come, mind you, so I should be able to pick up a coffee fairly regularly and finish it while the A290 charges. 

Still, I'm hoping the car has a few of its own tricks in store for waking me up and getting my pulse racing once I start throwing it down some proper roads, because I never sleep properly if I've had caffeine after midday.

Warmer weather can't come soon enough

There’s an amusing – if inconvenient – irony to the A290's affinity for warmer climes.

The Alpine name, chosen as it was to commemorate company founder Jean Rédélé's success in the formidable Alpine Rally throughout the 1940s, conjures images of icy, frost-covered passes and hardy mountain types chuffing steamy breath through clenched, chapped fists as they wait for their snowmobiles to warm up. 

Basically, it's a wintry word that's at odds with the cold-weather performance of the electric hatchback on which it is now prominently emblazoned. The A290 is no endurance champion, and I had expected its real-world range to fall well short of the WLTP-certified 224 miles once the temperature dropped – but not this much.

Back in milder times, I was aggravated when a journey from south London to Coventry (124 miles) took the battery from full down to about 20%, but as I write it's 2deg C outside and I wouldn't be confident of doing even that trifling two-hour journey without stopping for a charge - at least not without cruising at 60mph and turning the heater off. No thanks.

I'm having to really think about every journey and plan charging stops or slower routes for even relatively short-distance jaunts. One frigid day in early January, I had to make an emergency stop at an expensive public charger after unexpectedly using 4% of the battery just pootling from my place to a shop four miles away. 

The next day, I opted to use our decrepit old Ford Fiesta for a run into Kent and back rather than risk being marooned on a Sunday evening in my charger-less home town.

The whole thing is making it quite difficult to enjoy the A290's performance and probe the limits of its dynamic character. I find myself reverting to fun-sapping Save mode more often than not and being exceedingly judicious with my throttle inputs to minimise energy usage. It all feels a bit 2018.

Naturally, the situation would be easier to manage if I were able to install a charger at home, but all the same, I can't help feeling pretty short-changed and frustrated. I can't wait for the weather to warm up so I can start properly driving the A290 as intended.

Thirsty work

The A290’s lack of a cupholder has quickly become one of my main bugbears about this electric hot hatch, and long journeys were starting to feel like a bit of a chore without a hot cup of tea to make them less arduous. 

But after a bit of searching I might have found a 3D-printed solution. 

Read the full feature here

How is the Alpine coping as our roads go to pot?

Not to labour the bleeding obvious, but good golly, aren't the roads bad? There's a pothole roughly the size of Ullswater a few doors from my house, there's a trench on the high street that has claimed many a Continental and the next street over has been bodged back together so many times that it looks more like my nan's patchwork quilt than a road.

It's depressing to look at and makes for uncomfortable commuting whatever I'm driving. I had worried that the A290's stiffened suspension and chunky 19in wheels would exacerbate the sub-par surfacing to the extent that it became nigh-on unbearable to drive.

The similarly conceived Cupra Leon I ran last year had a fairly exhausting low-speed secondary ride, while the Alpine's Abarth 500e rival – which I had a couple of years ago – often felt like it had leaf springs at each corner.

But good news: it's proving far more adept at rounding out these imperfections than I had feared. I average 13mph commuting through the 'burbs so I'm rarely going quick enough to snap a suspension link or tear a tyre, but I've been impressed by the A290's quiet composure over even the most battered roads.

It is still passively suspended, over-wheeled and heavy for its size, so it's all relative, but the shock waves sent via the seat base and steering column are generally nicely muffled by the time they get to me, and the suspension doesn't thunk and clunk in the stomach-somersaulting manner of some performance cars when you do fall into a council canyon. 

There's some juddering and vibration over coarser ground, and I do tend to slam on the anchors when a speed bump jumps out at me for fear of banging my head on the ceiling, but broadly this is proving to be a highly competent city slicker. It's heartening that Alpine has been able to inject some extra poise and responsiveness into this chassis without sacrificing too much of the 'big-car' composure that makes the Renault 5 one of the best-rounded electric superminis available.

There's only so much it can iron out, though: I found myself with a spare couple of hours last Sunday and hopped in the A290 for a free-spirited tear around the local lanes, but it wasn't long before I'd had enough of the absolutely dire roads and cut my losses in favour of a more sedate crawl to a local pub for a roast. I'll take pork crackling over cracked alloys any day.

It's a shame, because when you get it on smoother ground (and providing you have enough juice in the battery for a bit of fun), the A290 is a riot. I've previously mentioned that it can feel unexpectedly hefty in a tight car park, but let loose on more open roads it nips and darts with the cheeky frivolity of the very best hot hatchbacks – and with the added bonus of being seriously, seriously quick when you give it the beans from rest.

I just hope we get a long enough dry spell for some of the worst roads in my area to get patched up before the A290 is returned to Alpine – I want the chance to get some flat-out blasts under my belt before sending it back on a high note. And ideally with all four tyres intact.

There's hope for hot hatch fans

At last: a break in the clouds, a break in my calendar and-happily – surprisingly few breaks in the Tarmac of the enticingly twisty B-road that I can see snaking away in front of me and up through the Berkshire Downs. Let's burn some electrons.

Winter provided scant few opportunities to drive the A290 in the frivolous, care-free manner that I knew would show this EV hot hatch in its best light. But here we go: spring has sprung, I've got a full battery, my phone's on Airplane Mode and the sun is shining, so it's the perfect time to drive the Alpine as I would a petrol hot hatch in the same circumstances, to see how easily I can spot the differences – and how much I care about them.

First things first: it's fast and it feels it. The proliferation of instant-power EV powertrains means that its on-paper 0-62mph time of 6.4sec doesn't sound as exciting as it might have done a few years ago, even if it is objectively pretty rapid. Indeed, it's slower than a Volkswagen Golf GTI (not to mention a good few humdrum family haulers these days), but Alpine has done a fine job of making an occasion of acceleration.

There's a cheeky, semi-convincing whoosh noise piped into the cabin that serves to boost sensory appeal, which is so often sorely lacking in quick EVs, and when you floor it or press the enticing red 'overtake' button on the steering wheel, a jazzy, space-themed graphic takes over the driver's display to make you feel like you're hurtling at the speed of light between galaxies.

It's all a bit gamified, but the A290 isn't a serious sort of car, so you can excuse a bit of contrivance. The A290 is already one up on early one-trick-pony electric hot hatches like the MG 4 XPower in the engagement stakes, then, and it keeps edging ahead as it shows off some real dynamic nous in the bendier bits.

I won't pretend it has the balletic malleability of a Honda Civic Type R or the unflappably planted composure of a hot four-wheel-drive Mercedes A-Class, but there's still impressive poise and genuine dynamic character to enjoy here.

With its decently weighted steering and keenly obedient front end, the A290 encourages you to hurtle into corners without bleeding off too much of the pace you've easily won on the straights, then keeps roll in check remarkably well as you pivot neatly around the apex and floor it out the other side, feeling far lighter and more compact than its baby crossover dimensions would have you believe.

I can't help wondering whether it might turn that little bit more tightly and grip slightly more sweetly with the aid of an electronic limited-slip differential (like that fitted to the similarly conceived Abarth 600e and upcoming Peugeot e-208 GTi), although the trick torque-vectoring system (which works by braking the front wheels individually) does a nice job of helping the front axle hook up on corner exit and ensuring consistent power delivery if either wheel becomes unloaded.

I've noticed that the slightly overbearing traction control system does tend to interfere whenever you give it the beans from rest, giving the effect of throttling back, and only liberating the A290's full reserves once you're well under way.

It's frustrating when you really just want to get up to speed, but I've convinced myself to think of it as a subtle, purposeful nod to the turbo lag that defined the accelerative characteristics of the original Renault 5 Turbo. It just needs a little bit of synthesised wastegate flutter piped into the cabin for the full effect.

Rewarding to drive, but it makes you pay

It should be noted first and foremost that my stewardship of the Alpine A290 coincided neatly with the coldest and most miserable part of the year, so my relationship with it was blighted by the need to charge it more often than I would have in summer and the grimmer experience of doing so.

That's not to say we had a bad time together. Indeed, I'll miss this funky electric hot hatch dearly for many reasons, which I'll come on to shortly. But straight off the bat I can tell you that it's decidedly not the car for you if you regularly do long trips. It just hasn't got the legs for it.

It's not entirely the A290's fault: I can't charge at home, so I'm largely dependent on Ubitricity lamp-posts that are only semi-local, shockingly expensive public fast chargers and very occasionally 7kW slow chargers.

This arrangement is eminently workable with an efficient, big-battery EV that I can juice up and forget about for a few weeks, but when just a few suburban commutes or a lap of the M25 will drain the battery, it adds a layer of stress to proceedings, which overshadowed the A290's more likeable attributes.

On average, a full charge would afford 164 miles of running, which was pretty unimpressive against an official 224-and that would drop as low as 125 with sustained high-speed cruising or particularly frigid temperatures (despite the A290 getting a heat pump as standard).

It's difficult for electric cars to be both small and long-legged, of course, with the inherent packaging constraints, but there are plenty of similarly powered and sized options on the market that go much farther on a charge. Our testers found the A290's Mini Cooper SE rival (with an almost identical size, battery and motor), for example, would manage more than 200 miles in mixed use.

If I were buying an A290, I'd strongly consider going for the GT version, which is more efficient than this GTS so goes farther and doesn't really have less grunt in the real world, yet is £4000 cheaper. Stamina concerns aside, though, the A290 is a thoroughly enjoyable little thing to scoot around in.

It has all the pep and urgency you could ask of a hot hatch, with the advantage over like-minded rivals that it delivers its reserves and handles with a distinct sense of character, rather than the sort of quick-but-clinical, disengaged vibe that afflicts many performance EVs.

The steering is satisfyingly weighty and amusingly, confidence-inspiringly responsive, while the impressive vertical body control helps to mask the A290's heft in corners – but without inflicting the bone-shattering secondary ride that's usually the trade-off for keen dynamics.

It's seriously fast off the mark, too, but the accelerator isn't too jabby and it doesn't tend to scrabble and squirm away from rest on full throttle, as can sometimes be the case with generously endowed front-wheelers – the meaty Michelin Pilot Sport tyres helping to make up for the lack of a clever limited-slip differential, such as that fitted to the Abarth 600e and Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica Veloce.

It's a good reminder that electric cars really can be fun and go some way to compensating for their lack of an engine note and gearbox with truly entertaining performance characteristics.

Without wanting to lay it on too thick, though, the A290 is still tricky to drive flat out just for the hell of it, simply because of the exacerbated range anxiety that comes from taking it to the limit. I chided myself on more than one occasion for letting loose on an appealing back road when I simply couldn't afford the time to stop later on and replace the wasted electrons, and there were days when I had nothing better to do but chose not to go for a blast because I would use half the charge just getting to a decent road.

On the other hand, though, it's exactly the sort of performance car that makes a lot of sense for nipping about town. It's not as small as it might seem in pictures (it's not far off the Ford Puma crossover in terms of overall dimensions) but is extremely easy to manoeuvre in tight environments, with a decent turning circle and good visibility all around (even if the rear-view camera is all but useless in the dark or rain).

It's composed when the going gets rough – as it often did during those grim few months of road-wrecking rain and frost – and the cockpit technology is all broadly intuitive and reliable in everyday use, avoiding most of the frustrating bings, bongs and blackouts that can really aggravate over the course of a few thousand miles.

Bonus points for the healthy smattering of physical controls - but marks lost for a boot that's too small for anything more than my weekly shopping and a cramped back seat that I'd think twice about sticking even a young child in for a long drive.

I promised myself I wouldn't mention the lack of a cupholder again, but here I am doing just that. You could argue that it's a trivial gripe, but the number of owners on the forums hunting for aftermarket solutions suggests it's a real annoyance. Certainly I felt a lot warmer towards the A290 once I'd installed a 3D-printed cupholder.

A nuanced car, then one with plenty of rational and emotional appeal but also some quirks and shortcomings that can make it tricky to live with. I think it makes most sense as a household's second car that can nip around doing all the boring school run and supermarket bits but be capable of stepping in on a Sunday morning for a bit of fun in the hills. But I'd steer clear completely if you don't have a home charger.

Alpine A290 GTS

Prices: List price new £37,500 List price now £34,245 Price as tested £38,600