Alpine’s third model, the A390, joins the brand’s A110 coupé and A290 hatchback. The new car is a crossover-coupé, largely true to the A390 Beta concept shown at the Paris motor show last year.
The A390 shares its basic Ampere Medium architecture with the Renault Scenic and Nissan Ariya, but with three motors, two at the rear and one at the front, to give rear-biased all-wheel drive and torque vectoring to boost agility and responsiveness. As to the lighting, we could think that low beam and high beam module are the really slim module just below the horizontal front position lamp. But no, they’re fully hidden in a dark zone of the front bumper; looks like a single standard biLED low/high-beam module.
The lighting signature is produced by a combined DRL and position lamp on the front, divided into elements based on triangle and trapezoid shapes. Some triangles appear under the bumper skin. This seems to be done with holes in the bumper to exhibit triangles from an outer lens behind the skin, unlike solutions seen in China (painting laser abrasion on audi and Galaxy E8 cars, for example).
The lighting diverges somewhat from the A390 concept, in that the production car has no front lit logo, though it seems possible to maybe light the alpine callout, fulfilling the 75-mm rule due to the wide horizontal lit band (position lamp).
The rear has also been simplified versus the concept, without any light through the rear bumper, but the rear Alpine logotype remains, like Toyota’s CHR, the Porsche 911, and Opel’s Grandland; this trend of lit brand names seems to be a strong one.
Interesting to see a vertical reflex reflector, not seen so often on vehicles, as designers often prefer an horizontal one to visually emphasize the width of the car.
Exterior lighting can be seen also into the side mirrors that integrate a puddle light with white Alpine logo. A very simple charging indicator is also present in the charging zone to indicate the battery status.
