In the grand scheme of things, it hasn’t been that long since the Alpine brand was rebooted with the launch of the Alpine A110. Since then, the brand has focused solely on that model, releasing various models based on it, like the A110 GT4, A110 Sport, A110 SportsX, and the A110 Legende GT. There was even word that an SUV would be coming next, and we even made a rendering of what it might look like, but it never happened. Fast forward to today, and alpine has even joined forces with Lotus to become a full-on EV company. That was back in January 2021, and since then, very little has come out of the brand except for an updated A110 and that cool A4810 Project by IED. The Alpine A110’s successor, which will obviously be electric, is supposedly in the works, but now we’ve learned just what the company has been working on for the past few years, and its future cars will probably surprise you.

Alpine Road Cars with F1 Tech – It’ll Be A Thing

We know that Alpine is planning to ramp up its model lineup with three new cars over the next four years, and this means it needs some serious expertise to do the job right. The company, up until this point, has had zero experience with road-going EV technology, which it has experience with aerodynamics, it’s not the kind of aero expertise that helps lead to maximizing range. That’s where this news comes into play with Autocar reporting that Alpine will rely heavily on its Formula 1 team to optimize vehicle efficiency while continuing to target the enthusiast market.

Alpine F1 Technical Director, Matt Harman, said “The A522 aerodynamics group at Enstone has just finished a particular project for Alpine road cars, and we’re about to embark on another. We’re linking those two people together, both in physical testing and in computational fluid dynamics. It’s a really nice collaboration, and it’s good for the aerodynamicists, giving them another angle to look at, freshening their minds. They really enjoy working on those projects, so we will keep them going. In fact, we will probably expand more of our engineering expertise into the road cars.”

According to Autocar, the group’s most recent project was a rebadged version of the Renault 5 that should launch in 2024. The next car is expected to be the GT X-Over, which is due in 2025 and was recently spied doing some winter testing, and the A110’s successor will supposedly arrive sometime after that through Alpine’s partnership with Lotus. According to Alpine’s CEO, Laurent Rossi, the brand intends to ride the F1 wave by transferring technology from the racing-spec battery management system to its streetcars because “whether you have a hybrid in f1 or an electric car in the street, it’s exactly the same today.”

This means we could see some form of the MGU-K unit Alpine’s racing team uses in F1, which will work hand-in-hand with the knowledge gained from developing F1 aerodynamics. Battery thermal management tech will also be brought over to Alpine road cars which should help the brand offer a decent range for its road cars. As explained by Rossi, “It’s when you can release electricity that you convert into instant torque; how much time can you do that around a track or along a road; how much of the battery charge you can recover; and how long you can make it last for range. All of this is the same. We transfer electricity from track to road and from road to track.”

The good news is that with the Alpine version of the Renault 5 launching for 2024, we should see that as soon as late next year, and that will give us an idea of what we can expect from future cars. What will really matter, though, is what Alpine does with the A110’s successor because while SUVs and crossovers are great and all, Alpine is a sports car brand, and it would be a shame for that heritage to die with the shift to electrification.