Alpine Unleashes Hydrogen-Powered Sports Car Prototype
The Alpine Aplenglow Hy4 Prototype channels “the perfect fusion of driver and car.”
It wasn’t that long ago that the Renault Alpine made a roaring comeback (2017, to be exact), but things are shifting into another gear with the introduction of an even more impressive Alpine prototype.
The Alpine Alpenglow Hy4 Prototype defies just about every convention possible in the world of luxury sports cars, in terms of everything from next-level, futuristic design to the way it’s powered internally.
So named for the term given to a distinctive reddish glow on the horizon opposite the sun, the Alpenglow “opens the road for an exhilarating new chapter in sports cars and motorsport,” the automaker said, and that’s no understatement.
The Alpenglow Hy4 Prototype uses a 4-cylinder, 340-horsepower engine, but the 7,000 RPM engine revs up using hydrogen in rather ingenious fashion.
It’s as much of an achievement in terms of design as it is in its physical power and prowess.
It’s also on a suitably larger scale than the striking new H. Moser & Cie. Formula 1 watch debuted recently by the BWT Alpine F1 team, but precise attention to detail is still the name of the game.
And in similar fashion to a watch fit for both the race track and the open road, Alpine dreamed up the Alpenglow with both motorsports and commercial production in mind.
The automaker notes that there’s been “particular attention paid to the aerodynamics,” resulting in an innovative “design narrative runs from the inside to the outside… evoking a perfect fusion of driver and car.”
Aside from its impressive specs, Alpine leaned on dueling design codes like fire and water, ice and water vapor, delivering a seriously distinctive color scheme.
They even went so far as to design the polymer pontoon fuel tanks around the cockpit in the shape of a water drop, thus “placing the pilot at the heart of the machine.”
With an eye toward clean emissions and impossibly powerful performance on the road and the track, Alpine is (apparently) shifting speedily toward a new (positive) extreme in automaking and craftsmanship.
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