2024 Alfa Romeo Tonale Quick Review

Welcome to Extra Throttle House. I'm Thomas. And I'm James. And I have been living with the Alfa Romeo Tonale, which means, in Extra Throttle House world, I've been responsible for remembering all the facts and figures and numbers and stuff, which, if you know it all, is a problem. So I think James has memorized them as backup anyway. No, I haven't. Oh no. I can't wait for this. Oh dear. This is the toenail. This is the toenail. In PEHEV format. In PEHEV format, which is the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. Right. Which it is. So how much does that make this in the end? I got this one. Starts at about 60 something Canadian, with a few add additions, you're at about 70 Canadian. That's quite a lot. That's quite a lot of money. Isn't this just the Dodge Hornet? Yep. Okay. In conclusion, you shouldn't... No. So this is a version of the Dodge Hornet that they're trying to sell as the more upmarket premium thingy. Right. But you could also get a Dodge Hornet in plug-in hybrid as well. Yes. But depending on what market you're in, it gets a little bit messy, right? Okay. We can get this car in the non-plug-in hybrid format here, but the States can't. Right. But this is the plug-in. That means that there is a 1.3 litre four-cylinder engine in the front, and in the back, there's an electric motor and a battery pack. 50 kilometers of range, EV only, which is pretty good. Not bad. I'm doing pretty well so far. Yeah, yeah. What's the name of this lovely green color? It doesn't quite look like Montreal green. What is it? Do you know? No. Yeah. It's Verde Fangio. Oh, Fangio, after the race car driver. Yeah. And it's a $2,000 option, actually. Yeah. Which is quite an expensive option for a... Yeah. But you know what? They're selling this as being all about style. We'll throw up some of the things from the press release in here. You'll laugh at some of the things that they said. It's supposed to be sensual. Right. Yeah. Making love to cars in Italy. Yeah, yeah. Look, it's good looking. It makes me wish that they were still doing something like a Brera, or even the smaller Mitre. Yeah. We never got that here. No, we never got those. But yeah, this sort of design and art style, smaller. Smaller. Smaller. Yeah. No, no. Listen, I think it's a good looking car. I think it's good looking from the front. I think it's good looking from the back. I love the heart-shaped grille, obviously. And you have something... I'm waiting for you to point it out, this license plate holder. I didn't want to do it, but now I will. It's kind of dumb. That's a ridiculous holder. I think that's just specific to the... I want to hope it's specific to the press car. Well, also, it's specific to where we live, because you have to have a front plate. Oh, true. Right? Yeah. You can't buy this... If this is the only holder you can get for this car, you can't buy this car in Ontario. You're not allowed. That is half a mailbox right there. It's very dumb. It's actually a recycling thing. Yeah. Of the smashed baseball batted mailboxes they've been making... Are you done? Yeah. Okay. Now, the issue that I have with this is that... Not that it's not good looking or bad looking, it's just dumb as a concept. This class of car? This class of car is stupid. I find it strange as well. Right? It's like there's not much space inside. These windows are really narrow. You get a little bit of extra height. The whole thing is objectively worse to drive than a hatchback or a wagon. Yeah. Right? But it's for people that like to be high up when they drive. Can we bring up again the price? I feel like it bears discussion and repeating. $70,000? $70,000? But it says on the side. There we go. What does that mean? Speed, I think. Right. But what does that mean for the car? Is this a specific trim? I think that that's the top trim. Yeah. Right. I probably should have known that before we started. How's the trunk space? It's all right. It's actually good for its class. Oh, it's an electric trunk. I think. Fancy electric. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. That's fine. Yep. That's not bad. It's a bit narrow. And if you lift this up, there's actually a little bit more storage space down there for all your charging accoutrements. And obviously, this is the charging port for the EV bit. Right. And the back seats. So it's more in here. Careful of this little thing here. This is for style and removing your two front teeth if you're not paying attention. All right. I got two inches in my knees and headroom. Yeah. No, it's not bad. Good for an adult. It's actually not uncomfortable. This is optioned with like a $1,500 sunroof thing, which I don't think that I would get because it's one of those that's behind your head. Right. So as a driver, it's pointless. Yeah. And it just makes the headroom lower, which is already quite small on the inside. Cool wheels. Yeah. Classic Alfa Romeo wheels. Some people don't like these. People have split on them. I like them. I think they're cool. And I think that they're quintessentially Alfa Romeo. Yeah. Right. You know it's an Alfa when you see those wheels. All right. Why don't I take you for a little spin? Okay. Yeah. All right. Let's do it. Yeah. Okay. You have... This is a challenge. You have two minutes to try and understand how all the systems work in this car and how they work together and how to change them and what the changes do. Okay. So... So what mode are you in right now? This has got the DNA switch, by the way, because we're in the upper trim. I'm in N. N. Yeah. I don't know what that means, but good. Not neutral. I can tell you that. Yeah. Oh, I can hear the... Yeah. I can hear the electricity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So how much horsepower has this got? It has 285 horsepower. Nice. I remembered. Nice. That was deep, deep back in the alcoves. It was way back there. It took me a minute. Yeah. I did it one number at a time. I used my mind palace and I had associations for each number. 285 and 347 pound feet of torque. That might not be right. Right. Right. But quite a lot of torque. Anyway, listen, I'll save you the stress of trying to understand how all of this works, but obviously this is a plug-in hybrid. So if you want, you can run in completely EV only mode. Right now we've got 24 kilometers of EV range because I've had the e-save button on, which makes sure that it charges the battery as much as it possibly can. Right. Whenever possible, because I didn't have a spot to plug it in at home. So I'll turn that off right now. So it will automatically go into EV mode when it wants to. But as you can feel, it's quite quick. It's five and a half seconds, zero to 60. Yeah. Not bad. And the torque fill is great. So if you accelerate in between the shifts, you'll feel a constant surge of EV. I see. Really smooth. Really smooth. Very nice powertrain. However, I'm going to click this over into A mode now. So let's put it into EV only mode. Oh yeah. It's losing the rear end. Oh no, the engine kicked in. You were too aggressive. Oh, okay. So just try and go a little bit easier. You're going to drive in EV only mode for a second. Okay. We're going to go calm. Calm, calm, calm. Denali. Yes. Means whisper. Okay. So we're now in EV. Okay. Yeah. Decent torque. But then this is it. This is as fast as you can accelerate. And then the engine kicks in. The engine will kick in if you try to accelerate too aggressively and it will warn you. That's quick enough for around town. Yes. It's fine. Lots of creaks going on in the interior. It's because it's a Stellantis product. Right. Yeah. Well, that's not to say that Alfa Romeos were like always amazingly well-made, but advanced efficiency mode unavailable. High acceleration requested. I did request high acceleration. You requested it. Yes. I did. The highest. Anyway, we can click this over into dynamic mode. Okay. Oh, it's all gone red. It's all gone red. And now it's a little bit punchier, a little bit sharper. They've done the short steering ratio. Yes. Yes. And we've got these absolutely gigantic, what, Giulia Quadrifoglio paddle shifters. Yep. But I can't really experience the transmission here. No. Here, I'll put it in manual mode for you. I feel like nothing's happened. Very, very little happens. It's the least I can expect. There's no change. Since this has the 1.3 liter, it only has a six-speed transmission. They are such satisfying shifters though. Yeah. The click is nice, but the shift is not. Right. Yeah. No, you're not going to get like Ferrari level drops on those shifts. It's just not a thing you're going to get. I do. Yeah. There's something Alfa about the way it drives though. It's kind of like sharp and peppy and like kind of excited. Yeah. The disclaimer here is we liked our time with the Hornet. I know everyone wanted a hate on that car. It was 20 grand cheaper. Yeah. The boring news is it's just fine. Yeah. Yeah. It was just a torquey four cylinder. And now this is a torquey still. I don't know if I'm feeling, apart from the EV-only drive, I don't know if I'm feeling oomph that would make me splash out another 20 grand. No. But what you are getting is, and we're going to pivot the conversation now into a little bit more of like a discussion I think about what this is, which is to say a plug-in hybrid. Yes. You have to pay out the butt hole for plug-in hybrids right now. You do. You do. They're ridiculously expensive. But where do you recoup that money? In the gas savings? No, not really. If you're talking about $10,000 plus more for the Pehev. Yeah. Also this interior is a bit meh. It's stylish. It looks cool, but it's just the materials are very, like this is a rough stitch on that. There's like a softness to the door. Yeah. No, I know. Listen, it's not amazing. It's not bad. But I think the mistake is them trying to sell this as a premium competitor. Yes. It shouldn't have gone up against things like the Lexus NX. It shouldn't have gone up against the, what's the Audi and the X1 or whatever. It doesn't match those in terms of also refinement in the ride. Yes. Right. It's a bit hollow and economy car feeling. Yeah. Which is fine if you're driving an economy car. Yes. But this is a $70,000 car in Canada. And the visibility is not perfect out front. I'm seeing a lot of dash, a lot of hood and quite a small windscreen. Yeah. So basically what I'm saying is that right now, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are very expensive. That said, I still think that this is the answer over a pure EV right now, at least where we live. But what about just a hybrid? Sure. But I really like the idea of, here's an example. I got a friend, his name is Dan. He has a RAV4 Prime. Hi Dan. Hi Dan. He has a RAV4 Prime. Right. And he drives about a 45 minute drive every day on EV only. Okay. Toyota told him he has to run through about a tank of gas or thereabouts a month to make sure the engine is healthy. Scary. Okay. But just because you shouldn't just let the engine never, ever run. Right. I see. Okay. So, but most of the time he gets to and from work every day, EV only. Plugs it in at home. That makes so much sense. But then he is an ice climber. So in the winter he drives extended distances way up north. And it just does the petrol. And he's got the petrol in. Oh, I like it. I lived with a mini Clubman Countryman plug-in. One of those things, yeah. It was a Cooper S Clubman, I think, or something. But it was very expensive. Sounds forgettable, but. It was forgettable. Yeah. It was forgettable. Yeah. I didn't mind what's going on here. I kind of like the gauge cluster here. Yeah. Some of the items are a bit small at first glance. I love the branding that they've done with the Charger as the snake's head. It's kind of fun. That's fun. It's a bit blasphemous, but it's pretty cool. Yeah. I don't know. I listen, I don't have any issues with a lot of like the styling and the branding. And I don't think that they should have leaned so hard on luxury. They should have made it more fun, more affordable, more all of those things. It's not a great ride, is it? No, it's not. It's very economy car ride. You get jostled. Well, we are in the stiffest suspension setting right now. Go back to N. Go back to N. There we go. So it looks good in that picture, but I actually think the Hornet that we drive looks better than this. I don't think so. I like the look of this better than the Hornet, personally. They both look good. Canada lucks out because I don't know if I'd spring for the Pehev version of this. Unless I was your mate Dan, who apparently is a super cool dude who just goes ice climbing. I would, I'd just stick to the Forsen. Yeah. What's it doing right now? It's really hanging on to that gear. Why is it doing that? Why is it hanging on? Let's give it a reason to go then, shall we? There we go. I don't, and it's got the gauge cluster that goes the opposite direction, like a Genesis. It's a BMW. No, no, no. This is, in many ways, this is a bit of a mess, this car. Yeah. Right. I like it for some reasons. I think that it's overpriced. I think that some of this is too complicated. By the way, trying to understand all of these different systems and how they interact is very weird. There's the e-hybrid mode here. I can like select, where is it down here? No, not schedules. Power flow. All of this is e-save. So if I click e-save, this is laggy as hell. I can basically ask what I want it to do. Do I want it to charge the battery, save the battery, and the target charge level I want it to get to? That's kind of nice. No, it's cool, but there is a lot going on, and I don't find it very predictable when the engine kicks in. But as a concept... What's that indicator sound? Pretty echoey. Italy, Italy, Italy. It's all styled. It's all styled. It's so styled. More than substance, I think. It's pretty quick, though. It's quick. I like that it's got tech. I like that there's a 360 camera, and they can't afford to deny you anything at that price. No, it has to have everything for that amount of money. But yeah, I don't know. I want plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to be more common and more affordable, because I think that that makes the most sense in the interim, until we've figured out charging infrastructure and all that stuff, and until we've figured out how to make battery packs not blow up if you flick them. Then this is what we need, a smaller battery, a little gasoline engine, just to give it that extra reliability for everyday usability. And then you still get the great fuel economy. It does make that start-stop very nice, though. Exactly. I will say, if you don't pay attention, this did happen to me, you will run out of EV range only, and then you were driving a very large 1.3-litre four-cylinder front-wheel drive. It torqued it just then. Yeah, that's not ideal, but it's your own fault. I wasn't paying attention, I didn't understand the e-save button yet, right? But now that I've got it figured out, on the way here, I added like, this was a 30-40 minute drive to get here this morning, and I added about 10 kilometres of EV range, just by driving it. Okay, not bad. Yeah, it's just fine. It's just fine, yeah. It's just too much money. Too much money? Yeah. I don't know if this is where I'd put my money. No. Well, on that note...