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The Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica 280 Veloce is the more powerful of the two Junior models, and it’s certainly fun to drive on the right road, but don’t expect a big real-world electric driving range.
Alfa Romeo is a brand that’s synonymous with sporty cars, but its first electric car, the Junior Elettrica that we’ve tested previously, only had 156 hp of power, so it didn’t really feel as though it had the genes of an Alfa Romeo. However the Junior Elettrica Veloce variant has 280 hp of power, which sounds a lot more interesting, so should this be on your shortlist of electric hot hatches?
In typical Alfa style, the Junior Elettrica 280 Veloce looks sporty, helped by its large alloy wheels. The interior features a number of elements that may be recognisable from other Stellantis models, and any rear seat passengers with long legs will be reminded that this is a crossover SUV that sits in the sub-compact (B-segment) class (it shares its platform with the Vauxhall Mokka, Peugeot e-2008, Jeep Avenger and Fiat 600e). The boot is 400 litres in size, although the luggage space can be extended to 1,265 litres with the rear seats folded. There’s space under the boot floor to store charging cables.
The Junior has a 54kWh battery and a 280 hp electric motor, that’s currently unique to Alfa, powering the front wheels.
At 4,173 mm long, the Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica Veloce is compact, and when combining this with 280 hp of power and a 0-62 mph time of 6.0 seconds, you’d expect that there’s some entertainment in the driving department, and you’d be correct. Point the Junior Elettrica Veloce at your favourite set of B-road corners, and there’s fun to be had. The handling is agile and the steering is responsive.
Of course the Junior is front-wheel drive, and 280 hp of power / 345 Nm of torque being transmitted via the front tyres means challenges with grip, especially on wet/cold roads – even with a Torsen mechanical limited slip differential, which aims to transfer torque to the wheel with the most grip, to improve traction and prevent wheelspin.
And then there’s the suspension. Best to avoid roads with potholes if you have any back problems, and the ride quality isn’t helped by the wide, low profile tyres – which also help to result in a significant amount of road noise especially on motorways. Yet the Alfa is also bouncy rather than composed on undulating country roads. And the brakes could be more confidence-inspiring.
The Junior features the standard small Stellantis gear selector switch in the centre console, with the options of P, R, N D and B – surprisingly there are no steering wheel-mounted paddles for control of brake regeneration, which would be a better solution. Next to the gear selector is the ‘DNA’ drive mode switch, offering Dynamic, Natural and ‘Advanced Efficiency’ options.
In the middle of the centre console is a big engine stop/start button, which is in a user-friendly position, but it often seems to take a while for the car to spring into life before you can select a gear and drive off.
As per all new EVs, there’s a central touchscreen, but it’s quite small and narrow, and positioned low down on the dashboard. There are no shortcut buttons on the screen, so it’s not particularly user-friendly to navigate around, especially when Apple CarPlay is being displayed. You have to press the home button – which is a separate physical button above the screen – to access car controls on the screen, and then swiping of the screen may be required to try and find items such as satnav.
Next to ‘home’ is a ‘vehicle’ button which you need to select if you want to switch off the lane departure warning system, which you’ll want to do, otherwise the steering corrupts the driving enjoyment. There are some physical buttons for the climate controls, but like the home and vehicle buttons, these are also quite dark and hard to see. There are no physical buttons on the dashboard for the heated seats – to switch these on you have to go searching for sub-menu in sub-menus on the touchscreen (and there’s no heated steering wheel).
The Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica 280 Veloce has an official WLTP combined electric driving range of 200 miles. During our week with the Junior we had to travel to multiple car launch events all around the UK. While driving hundreds of miles at 70mph it became obvious that the Junior Elettrica Veloce was falling very short of achieving the official 200-mile figure; at motorway speeds in the real-world it was averaging around 150 miles on a full charge.
The official range of 200 mile isn’t great, but a real-world range of 150 miles at 70 mph means a lot of stopping to charge when trying to get to car launches on time. We appreciate that the WLTP combined electric driving range figure isn’t the result of testing at motorway speeds, but having reviewed every electric car that’s ever been on sale in the UK, there are very few other cars that fall so short of the WLTP figure at motorway speeds. The wide wheels and tyres won’t help with this, but the accuracy of the car’s range estimation (which always displayed 207 miles when fully charged) is also likely to be a factor.
When you do stop to charge – as we had to frequently – the maximum rapid charging rate of 100 kW means that you can’t top up with hundreds of miles in a short time; a 20% to 80% charge takes around 27 to 32 minutes. And the Alfa doesn’t even show you a read-out on the dash of the how charging is progressing.
The Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica 280 Veloce is priced at £42,295. Our test car had options of Sport Pack, Technology Pack, Bi-Colour Roof, Electrically Operated Sunroof, and Arese Grey paint with Black Roof, all costing £6,300, and taking the total price of the car to £48,595.
Prices for the Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica with 156 hp start at £33,895, with Speciale trim costing £35,695.
With 280 hp of power in a B-segment sub-compact SUV/crossover, the Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica 280 Veloce is fun to drive, especially on twisting country roads. Unfortunately it was on test with us during a week of multiple car launches around the UK, when the official 200-mile driving range dropped to a real-world average of 150 miles at 70mph on long motorway journeys. Ride comfort on poorly-surfaced roads isn’t one of the Junior’s strengths, and the infotainment system isn’t user-friendly to navigate around. And at £42,295, or £48,595 when the options on our test car have been taken into account, this EV is quite expensive. So it’s difficult to award the Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica 280 Veloce anything more than a Green Car Guide rating of 7 out of 10.
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