2023 Alfa Romeo Tonale plug-in hybrid review: Quick drive

We seem to write it all the time, but small and medium SUVs are a serious battleground in modern motoring terms. Every manufacturer wants a piece of these exploding segments – perhaps even more so the luxury brands who know all too well that the small hatch or sedan is no longer the entry point to a lifelong relationship with a brand.

Enter Alfa Romeo and the new Tonale. a small SUV that is, according to the brand itself, charged with strengthening public confidence in build quality, after-sales ownership, and the thrill that should come with parking an Alfa Romeo in your driveway. In fact, Alfa Romeo’s global head of product, Daniel Tiago Guzzafame, told us at launch that quality was the KPI for the Tonale, even more important than sales.

That’s a big call to make, but also a line in the sand for a legendary Italian brand that hasn’t had the traction outside of Italy that its more than 112-year history deserves.

Alfa Romeo is a pillar of Italian motoring, with a long history of beautiful design and, perhaps more importantly, a connection between car and driver that few mainstream brands have been able to replicate. To drive a classic Alfa is, and always has been, a special experience. And, to be fair, that’s how it should be for a brand that hangs its hat on design, engineering and passion.

Tonale has a big job to undertake, then, and it certainly looks the part. Ownership and time, though, will tell the story of build quality and whether the Alfisti have fallen in love with Alfa’s new small SUV. Let’s take our first look at the 2023 Alfa Romeo Tonale PHEV Q4 at launch in Italy.

We don’t know what the exact pricing or standard specification will look like for Australia when the Tonale does launch locally in 2023. We do know that there will be two grades available – Ti and Veloce – and in Europe there are two options packages that can be added.

You can see in our initial guide to the model that there is plenty of standard kit across both Ti and Veloce, and the two-model, two-option-pack range is easy to understand.

What will be a factor in Australia is the final price. Arguably no plug-in hybrid is cheap from any manufacturer, but the Tonale is likely to cost a fair bit when it does launch. We know the mild-hybrid Tonale will start from $49,900 before on-road costs when it does launch, with a higher model grade sitting in the mid-50-grand region.

The price premium to the PHEV model in Europe indicates a jump of $AU12,000–$15,000 will be likely, pushing the asking price up significantly. We’ll report back with full pricing and specification for the Tonale PHEV when it’s available. If the Tonale PHEV is able to go blow for blow with the approximately $60,000 Cupra Formentor VZe, we should have an interesting battle on our hands in Australia.

There’s no doubt that the Tonale's cabin feels like an Alfa Romeo. You won’t mistake it for being German, Japanese or South Korean. There’s an execution to the design and materials that looks and feels like an Alfa Romeo should.

Perhaps most importantly, the cabin is more spacious than we expected given the compact exterior dimensions. Even with a six-footer driving, there’s room for another six-footer behind that seat in the second row.

Family buyers will love that flexibility. Taller than that and you might start to get close to the outer reaches of the headroom, but the sloping roof line doesn’t detract from the comfort for most occupants.

The seats – front and rear – are excellent. Up front, the two buckets are trimmed neatly and sculpted enough that you sit into them, but they aren’t too firm trying to mimic a too-sporty seat either. Adjustability is catered to in terms of both fore and aft, as well as height, and we found visibility to be excellent as both driver and passenger.

The steering wheel is familiar if you’ve driven a Stelvio, and it has a sporty vibe without being silly. The start button is mounted inside the wheel, and the crafted aluminium shift paddles on our tester were beautiful in execution, but affixed to the column rather than the wheel, you need to reach around them to get to the indicator stalk.

Does a small SUV ‘need’ shift paddles? Probably not, and they are optional in Europe. They could be standard for Oz, though.

Key to this segment is storage, and the Tonale does well there also. The wireless charging pad is positioned cleverly, and keeps your smartphone safe and secure, as well as housing other small items out of the way of the shifter. Two cup/bottle holders are out of the way behind the shifter, there’s a small bin beneath the centre elbow point, and the door pockets will easily stash regular water bottles.

Second-row passengers get one USB-A and one USB-C charge port, as well as air vents and a retractable centre armrest. The door pockets in the second row also feature bottle holders. The second-row seat folds down in a 60/40 arrangement and there’s a central ski port as well.

With the second row in use, you get 385L – down from the non PHEV model as expected – and out to 1430L if you fold the second row down. The PHEV hardware, as well as the storage area for the charging cables, means the luggage floor is flat and a little higher than it might be if it were a regular non-PHEV Tonale.

The expected screens and displays are present, and a genuine step forward from the system we’ve tested in the Giulia or Stelvio. There’s a level of understatement about them, though, classy and not in your face. It’s hard to define, but you can see in the pictures that there’s a muted quality to the screens that some other manufacturers would do well to emulate.

The digital driver’s display is a good one, with our only gripe being the gear indicator when you’re in manual mode being too small and buried down in a corner of the screen. It’s hard to make out on the move, in other words. You can also recreate a display that looks like classic Alfa Romeo gauges, a neat tip of the hat to the brand’s history. It’s easy to tell when you’re in EV mode, too, thanks to a clear notification within the display.

There’s enough switchgear to make controlling the Tonale easy, but not so much that the cabin feels like it's drowning in it. The steering wheel has controls for other functionality aside from the start/stop button, and the HVAC controls are easy to access under the infotainment screen. The rolling dial for the volume is a neat touch, too, and easy to use on the move.

The infotainment screen is clear and well within view of the driver, sitting atop the centre of the dash. Our tester had the optional audio system, and quick tests of both the wireless charging pad and wireless Apple CarPlay indicated that it all works well.

The proprietary satellite navigation system was solid, too, accurate and quick to rework if you diverted off-track. The screen itself was snappy to respond to prompts and commands. All in all, it’s a big step forward from previous Alfa Romeo systems.

You can also access displays that explain what the hybrid system is doing either on the move, or retrospectively, and there’s plenty to keep you occupied if you’re keen on working out average fuel or electricity use, charge, range and so on.

Tonale hasn’t yet been tested by ANCAP, but it does have a five-star rating from recent Euro NCAP testing, which is a solid starting point. In that Euro NCAP test, the Tonale scored 83 per cent for adult occupant protection, 85 per cent for child occupant protection, 66 per cent for vulnerable road user protection, and 85 per cent for its safety assistance systems.

Crucial to the Alfa Romeo experience is the way it feels behind the wheel. That’s a tough thing to define in some ways, and it’s an even tougher thing to deliver at a time we’re moving toward somewhat generic electric drivetrains.

Engineers argue that they will be able to get around this, but I’m yet to be convinced. Still, the Alfa Romeo Tonale isn’t electric – yet – meaning there’s a perky petrol engine working in concert with the electric hardware.

There’s a 1.3-litre turbocharged petrol four-cylinder engine, which makes 132kW and 270Nm mated to a six-speed automatic. More on the gearbox in a minute. At the rear, there’s a 90kW electric motor, which rounds out the Q4 all-wheel-drive part of the equation.

And there’s also a 33kW electric motor up front that never directly drives the wheels. Its job is to assist the turbo at low engine RPM to seamlessly eliminate lag or power deficits in the early acceleration phase, and also allow the petrol engine to run power back into the battery pack. There’s some complexity there, as you’d expect of a modern hybrid, but on our launch drive it all worked smoothly and effortlessly.

The petrol engine powers the front wheels, while the electric motor at the rear powers the rear wheels only. It is fed by a 15.5kWh nickel-manganese cobalt, gas-cooled battery pack, which affords up to 80km in claimed electric range. Expect somewhere between 65–70km in the real world, but that does explain the WLTP fuel-use claim of just 1.4L/100km, if the majority of that first 100km is on electric power.

We can’t accurately predict real-world range and consumption, because the Tonale we tested wasn’t fully charged when we commenced our launch drive.

But anything beyond even 60km of electric range is the sweet spot for the average Aussie commuter, so 80km is more than enough to justify the PHEV purchase concept. You could easily get to and from work every day in the Tonale PHEV without using fuel, and only dip into the fuel tank on longer road trips.

Interestingly, the Tonale doesn’t feel heavy out on the road. The ride can be firm on harsh cobbles or really poor surfaces, for example, but on smoother sections, and into twisty stretches of road, it hides its 1835kg weight pretty well. There’s plenty of front-end grip and a sure-footed way it holds onto the road that means you can push it reasonably hard if you’re in the mood. According to Alfa Romeo engineers, that is crucial to the way an Alfa Romeo should behave.

You can lock the Tonale into EV mode via the drive mode dial, with A for advanced efficiency, as well as N for normal and D for dynamic also available. Even in normal mode, the electric motor comes into play regularly, assuming you have charge in the battery, of course, and we noticed the system scavenging back some charge on downhill runs and in stop/start traffic.

Top speed in EV mode is 135km/h, and 204km/h with the petrol engine on song. A run from 0–100km/h – although not especially relevant in this segment – takes 6.2 seconds.

You don’t really notice the petrol engine until you make it work higher up in the rev range, and we liked the power on offer for roll-on overtaking on the motorway. When the petrol engine does kick in, the transition is smooth, with no hesitation or shudder through the cabin. The same goes for when it shuts back down again. The brakes did take a bit of getting used to, especially at city speeds in EV mode, where you’ll take some time to work out the grab point and pedal feel.

The cabin is quiet and well insulated, another area that Alfa Romeo claims is key to the premium aspiration. Even at highway speeds on coarse-chip surfaces, there’s little in the way of tyre or wind noise entering the cabin. The gearbox works well no matter how hard or easily you’re pushing the Tonale, too, and is neatly matched to the rest of the driveline.

We completed a quick track run at the Alfa Romeo test track in Balocco and, as it did on the road, the Tonale impressed with its front end response, grip, and sharp steering. It’s more sporty than you might expect, and arguably more sporty than it needs to be, but it is an Alfa Romeo after all.

Move the dial in dynamic mode, and it changes the way the hybrid system works, holds lower gears closer to redline, and ensures the electric motor is ready to go when needed. As expected, the throttle response is also sharpened up, the dampers are switched into their firmest setting, and the torque-vectoring system is activated. That system will brake the inside rear wheel and shift torque to the rear outside wheel to provide as much drive as possible.

The Tonale didn’t understeer when pushed the way I would have expected it to, and the general level of grip and balance on-track is impressive. You’d have to drive deliberately like a lout to unsettle the Tonale, even at track speeds. If you move to a Tonale from a more established SUV in the segment, the steering will be something you notice almost immediately. It’s lively, sharp and quick; another factor that Alfa’s engineers are adamant must be present in any vehicle wearing the famous badge.

With the fact that it’s beautifully styled out of the equation, the Tonale needs to deliver on the driver engagement front and the build quality front to not only tick the Alfa Romeo box, but also take the brand toward its premium electric future.

The first element of that is easier to define than the second. Time will tell once we start to see feedback and experience from Australian buyers. That it drives and behaves like an Alfa Romeo should is something we didn’t expect given its focus as a small, fuel-efficient PHEV in the SUV segment.

It’s fun to drive on any road, practical, insulated and enjoyable. It won’t be cheap in Australia, but no PHEV is at the moment, and its real-world range ensures that it’s as useful to the regular Aussie commuter as it is beautiful.

After our brief international first drive, it looks like the Alfa Romeo Tonale is a significant step in the right direction for the legendary Italian brand.