Alpine will crown its electric sports car line-up with the A310 – and its first test mule has now been spotted testing for the first time.

Arriving in 2028, the 2+2 coupé will put the French firm toe to toe with the likes of Porsche, Maserati and Lotus.

Tipped as “an icon of future sports cars”, the new EV will serve as a flagship for an expanded all-electric Alpine line-up.

The Renault-owned marque's new range will include the recently launched A290 hot hatch, the upcoming Tesla Model Y-sized A390 crossover and coupé and convertible versions of the next-generation A110 – all of them electric.

The line-up will be rounded off before the end of the decade by three more EVs, which are thought to be larger, E-segment models that Alpine will use to break into the American market.

This A310 has been seen by Autocar snappers cold-weather testing near the Arctic Circle. While the 2+2 mule looks to show a departure from the classic Alpine look, this is in fact understood to just be a chassis prototype with the body merely a testing shell that won’t be used for production. The shell shares similarities to the Ligier JS2 R racer, although Alpine hasn't confirmed this.

Instead, the rakish A310 will adopt a similar look to the rest of the Alpine range, notably taking the front end from the A390 crossover, as our render shows below.

Pictured testing for the first time earlier this month, the A390 will usher in a new era of Alpine design language, with a distinctive wraparound light bar, a sharply pointed nose and a Le Mans-inspired central fin at its rear.

The A310 takes its name from a radically styled four-seat coupé from the 1970s. The company will position it as a more practical alternative to the upcoming A110 EV, in effect mirroring the relationship the 718 Cayman and the 911 have within Porsche, a brand whose success Alpine is looking to replicate.

Alpine marketing director Bruce Pillard has previously told Autocar: “The A110 is limited in volume because it’s a two-seater, and we know that adding two more seats in a car will make a huge difference.”

A key selling point for the A310 will be its lightness, made possible by the new Alpine Performance Platform (APP). The scalable architecture will be used first by the new A110 next year and has been developed exclusively for Alpine’s future sports EVs.

More mainstream models, such as the A290 and A390, will use variations of platforms from within the Renault Group.

Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo has claimed the APP will allow the electric A110 to be “lighter than a comparable car with a combustion engine”, despite the penalty incurred by weighty battery packs.

For reference, the current A110 is one of the lightest cars in series production, at 1102kg - a billing that Alpine wants its cars to retain in the electric era.

Innovative power management software, in the form of active torque vectoring, will also be used to give the “driving dynamic of a lightweight car” and counteract the dynamic penalty of a several-hundred-kilogram weight gain, said Alpine CEO Philippe Krief.

The Frenchman, known for his work as an engineer on such acclaimed sports cars as the Ferrari 458 and Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, said Alpine is committed to the A310 and its sporting rangemates remaining true to the dynamic principles that have defined the brand and the four-cylinder A110, such as agility.

Pillard said these measures are necessary to make the A310 “an icon of future sports cars” and a “true Alpine”.

Outright performance will be another key pillar of the A310’s positioning. It will adopt the same tri-motor set-up – one at the front and two at the rear – as the A390.

Alpine’s most powerful car to date is the 345bhp limited-run track-focused A110 R Ultime, but its upcoming electric sports cars are likely to surpass that and be capable of far quicker 0-62mph times.

However, design boss Antony Villain said recently that Alpine’s future models aren’t “about just driving straight”, so the A310 is unlikely to be endowed with full-bore supercar levels of power, at least in its standard form.

It will, suggest Alpine, have wheels that light up blue when the car’s torque vectoring is activated. To debut on the A390, it's a way of making muted electric car driving more exciting for onlookers, said Alpine.

However, unlike other driver-focused EVs such as the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, the A310 won’t emit artificial engine noises or simulate gearchanges. Krief has previously told Autocar that Alpine’s EVs should not sound like they have a combustion engine. He added: “This is fake. This is really fake. I don’t like fake things like that.”

Instead, the A310 is likely to emit a distinctive sound created from the noise the electric motor makes, as in the A290 hot hatch. “We could find something that is not the same but [similar],” said Krief. “It is very easy to do that.”