Alfa Romeo owners have been plugging in their cars for years, but usually to OBD fault code readers to work out what the hell has gone wrong this time. But for the first time, you can now buy an Alfa that plugs into mains electricity to charge an onboard battery pack that gives up to 80 km of emissions-free driving. Called the Tonale Plug-In Hybrid Q4, it’s also the only way to buy a Tonale with all-wheel drive, at least in Europe, where the new car has just gone on sale alongside the existing front-wheel drive mild hybrid.

Alfa had already released some details of the new plug-in hybrid model at the Tonale’s global reveal earlier this year, but in case you missed that, the Q4 employs an inline four-cylinder petrol engine at the nose that drives only the front wheels through a six-speed automatic transmission, and a rear-mounted electric motor hooked up to a 15.5 kWh battery that only drives the rear axle. It’s an evolution of the system fitted to the European-market 4XE version of the Jeep Compass, whose platform the Tonale shares.

 

The 1.3-liter gas motor kicks out 178 hp and the electric motor an additional 121 hp, for a combined output of 276 hp. Zero to 100 km/h takes 6.2 seconds, which is more than 2.5 seconds faster than the 158 hp mild-hybrid Tonale we drove in October. Flat out, the Tonale PHEV will do 206 km/h in hybrid mode, or 135 km/h when running purely on volts. Likely of more importance to potential buyers is that the Q4 has a claimed electric range of over 80 km on the WLTP urban cycle, and more than 600 km of total range when using both power sources. Make use of the 7.4 kW onboard charger and you can fully charge the battery in less than 2.5 hours.

So far the Tonale Q4 PHEV has only been announced in Europe, while the only Tonale Alfa Romeo USA has confirmed for sale in 2023 has a turbocharged 2.0-liter engine and a conventional all-wheel drive system combo that Europe doesn’t get. But given the way the market is moving towards electrification it seems likely that the PHEV will make its way across the Atlantic eventually, and probably – much to Alfa’s annoyance – together with a PHEV version of its Dodge Hornet brother.