Alpine A290 vs DS 3 Crossback E-Tense

The DS 3 Crossback E-Tense is £505 cheaper to buy. Running costs are almost identical - about £168 a year either way, at 8,000 miles on an off-peak home tariff. Add 5 years of charging and the DS 3 Crossback E-Tense comes out roughly £585 cheaper overall. These figures cover list price and home charging only - insurance, servicing, tyres and depreciation will move the real total.

EVcarsguide estimates a real-world motorway range of about 155 miles for the Alpine A290 and 166 miles for the DS 3 Crossback E-Tense - effectively matched, and both well below their WLTP figures because sustained high speed is the hardest case for an EV. Both rapid-charge to 80% in a similar time, around 30-30 minutes.

The DS 3 Crossback E-Tense is the easier car for tight UK car parks: it is 33 mm narrower than the Alpine A290. In a standard 2,400 mm bay that leaves about 610 mm of total clearance for the DS 3 Crossback E-Tense and about 577 mm of total clearance for the Alpine A290. The Alpine A290 also turns in a 0.5 m tighter circle, which helps with U-turns and multi-storey ramps.

Over a 8-year ownership window EVcarsguide's degradation model projects roughly 84% battery health for the Alpine A290 and 84% for the DS 3 Crossback E-Tense. That is close enough that capacity loss should not decide between them. Both use NMC-type cells, so for daily use keep the charge limit near 80% to slow degradation.