REPORT 7
And so my half year with the Alfa Romeo Junior Electtrica has come to a close. Six months and around 5000 miles on, how has it fared and how has my opinion changed of it – if at all – during that period.
Scrolling back to my first report of the car, I must admit to being somewhat cynical of the Junior when it first arrived. A smaller 54kW battery than I’d been used to, indeed a smaller car altogether, its Stellantis cousins have been somewhat underwhelming on the impact they’ve made on the small EV market.
This Junior didn’t have the easiest of starts either, having begun life as the Milano before a late name change. At least it had looks on its side. The over-sized front Alfa grille doesn’t look as imposing in real life as it does on pictures and has won plenty of admirers, especially among my neighbours. I also love the thin light strip across the rear and its squat stance too. Make no mistake, this could only be an Alfa – none of the ‘newcomer’ EV brands would ever produce anything that looked like this. It wouldn’t get past their customer clinics for one.
Then there’s the range. Officially, it was 254 miles with a 4.1ml/kWh efficiency, but a 54kW battery after the previous 87kWh battery in my last long termer, a Renault Scenic, had me worried about its real world range and efficiency. I didn’t have long to wait to be proved wrong though.
Very quickly the Junior started recording at least 4.0 or 4.1mls/kWh and higher on shorter journeys and while it dipped a little below that on motorways and on faster cruising roads, those were relatively little of my overall mileage. In fact, it has only dropped recently because so many of those more recent miles have been on the motorway.
And all that motorway driving meant a lot of public charging too, which bought another Junior surprise. The Alfa’s 100kW maximum rapid charging rate is decent rather than outstanding, but what does raise the eyebrows is just how long it can sustain that rate for. More than once, we saw the Junior reach close to that 100kW rate, but also it only really slowed when it reached 90% of charge, not the usual 80% of almost every other EV I’ve ever driven. In that respect, the Junior is almost unique and it made a real difference, especially when on longer journeys.
On the road too, it was comfortable enough, boasted a good ride (certainly far better than the Veloce version I borrowed temporarily) and handled pretty respectably too. When the mood and road took us, the steering was sharp with a good turn in and what it lacked in absolute feedback, it made up for in terms of its enthusiasm. It was certainly enough to put a smile on my face more than once.
The Junior’s size wasn’t the hindrance I was expecting either. Yes, the rear seats are hardly palatial and adults wouldn’t want to be there for any length of time, but on the rare occasions I did have three passengers, it coped well enough. The same goes for the 400 litre boot, which only for longer family holidays meant any overspill going onto the rear seats. For my son and I, it was perfectly good.
As stated in my previous reports, it’s also the only test car that I have ever driven where the Apple Carplay integration has worked faultlessly throughout my time with the car. Either through Bluetooth or when connected via a cable for charging, it has always worked, for which I was never not grateful.
And that, ultimately, kind of sums up my time with the Junior over the past six months. It has been an unexpectedly superb companion and transport throughout my time with it. Easy to live with, efficient, capable and well engineered with it, it’s no exaggeration to say that I would happily buy one tomorrow. Praise indeed.
REPORT 6
When you road test cars for a living, you quickly discover something slightly odd about the different cars within a model range.
It’s a natural assumption to think that the best car within a range is the most expensive one, with the most equipment, the most power or performance or the best looks, but that isn’t always necessarily the case. I was reminded of this recently when my Alfa Romeo Junior went in for a service.
Alfa themselves chose to take it away to do the work and instead left me with another Junior, this time the flagship Veloce, to drive for a week. A great opportunity I thought to drive the sportier, faster model for seven days and compare the two. But it didn’t take long before I knew which one I preferred.
The first problem was the heavily bolstered sports seats. Now either I’m getting older or haven’t been walking past enough cake shops recently, but I found them plain uncomfortable. Yes, the support was great, but they were too firm and too high compared to the standard seats in my Speciale and I simply couldn’t get comfortable.
Yes, the Veloce was definitely sportier with a more growly ‘engine’ note being fed into the cabin and a noticeably more responsive throttle pedal. Even the slightest twitch of my left ankle would have the Junior leaping forward like a dog on its way for a walk straining at the lead.
There was certainly no doubt about its more sporting intentions. And while that’s great – this is an Alfa after all – it’s not so great when you’re not in the mood or just wanting to pop to the shops or on your morning commute, which let’s face it, is 90% of the time…
At least that throttle pedal you could drive around and make allowances for. What you couldn’t though was the ride quality. On 20 inch alloy wheels the ride quality was, quite simply, ruined. The difference was night and day compared to the 18 inch wheels on the Speciale. It was so bad, that my 13-year old son even commented on it within two minutes of being in the car.
So, you can imagine, I welcomed the return of my Speciale with especially open arms, though quite what the dealership had actually done for the service was a mystery. Despite having had the car for a week, it hadn’t been cleaned and the infotainment system still needed an update – something that I’d deliberately left to be done for the service. Alfa dealers have been improving of late for their quality of service and when they’ve got a car as good as the Junior that’s likely to attract new buyers to the brand, you would think they’d be keen to go the extra mile.
Either way though, the experience did show me that, as stated, for me the sweet spot for the Junior range is probably with my Speciale in the line up. I’m now starting to near the end of my days with the Alfa and I will be genuinely sad to see it go. So in the meantime I’ll be revelling in the excellent economy, compact size and the fact that with so few others seen on the road, it still has some novelty factor too.
REPORT 5
Ah the enjoyment of a Devon holiday with children and those long car journeys stuck in traffic jams. The tears, the crying, the tantrums – and sometimes my son can get pretty bad too… And that was just the joy of trying to negotiate the M5 in the Alfa Junior on a Friday.
Truth be told, as much as I was looking forward to a holiday, I wasn’t looking forward to the lack of EV charging at my rented holiday cottage. The only saving grace was that it was a place I’d been to before and a journey I knew well, so I was reasonably familiar with the charger locations both on the route down and once there.
First stop: McDonalds. Not for their haute cuisine, but for their tie-up with Instavolt. I’ve said it before, but whoever at McDonalds thought of the brand partnership with Instavolt is frankly a genius. Recognising that people will be parked for a while as they charge and combining that with an opportunity to buy lunch or even just a cup of coffee is such a smart move. Put simply, it means that you’re more likely to seek their locations out on your journey. Just as we did.
Unfortunately though, we weren’t alone in that thought and on this occasion, all of the charging bays were taken. Ironically though, a 300kW BP Pulse charger right next door was completely free, so we jumped on that instead. At 87p/kWh, it was a pricey 27kWh that we topped up with, but it was worth it. And at this point, I hadn’t really properly noticed anything unusual about the Junior’s charging that I would do later in the holiday…
Charging-wise, the rest of the week was spent visiting another BP Pulse charger close by to our holiday cottage to top up at convenient times as and when we needed it and also at the end of the week before our return journey. And it was only then that I really noticed something unusual about the Alfa and, more specifically its charging speed.
The Alfa’s maximum charging speed is 100kW, which is rarely seen, even when the charger is capable. However, as so often with EVs, it’s charging above 80% where things can get painful when publicly charging. In short, if you have to maximise your range and charge above 80%, the charging rate can slow to the pace of an asthmatic snail with a sprained ankle.
But that isn’t the case with the Junior – another major factor in the pro column of this car (see previous report). Unlike every other EV I’ve charged publicly, the Alfa’s charging rate sailed past 80% without showing any signs of letting up and only really slowed once it reached 90%. Now admittedly it showed that it would take a further hour to get from 91% to fully charged, but that was good enough for 231 miles of range and that was plenty for me. I have never known any EV’s battery be this efficient at a public charger and it made a real difference to squeezing every mile out of a charge.
Now the reality is that most owners will spend the vast majority of their time charging from home, but this speed of rapid charging was a real boon. Again, no other EV I’ve ever tested or publicly charged has performed as well as this Alfa Junior – it’s been a real eye-opener. It’s enough to make you almost look forward to long journeys with your children. Well, almost.