Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica vs Alpine A290

The Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica is £95 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 two land within £175 of each other - effectively the same to own. 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 176 miles for the Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica and 155 miles for the Alpine A290 - both below their WLTP figures, because sustained high speed is the hardest case for an EV. The Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica goes roughly 21 miles further between charging stops. Both rapid-charge to 80% in a similar time, around 27-30 minutes.

The Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica is the easier car for tight UK car parks: it is 42 mm narrower than the Alpine A290. In a standard 2,400 mm bay that leaves about 619 mm of total clearance for the Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica and about 577 mm of total clearance for the Alpine A290. The Alpine A290 also turns in a 0.3 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 Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica and 84% for the Alpine A290. 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.