Alfa Romeo teases its first-ever SUV BEV, generating buzz ahead of its 2024 debut
After years of making promises to do so, legacy Italian automaker Alfa Romeo is making good on its word to finally start delivering some BEVs… starting next year. Today, Alfa Romeo teased its first-ever Sport Urban Vehicle (SUV), which will be called the Milano – a tribute to its native land. Here’s what we know so far.
Alfa Romeo Automobiles S.p.A. is an Italian automaker with over a century of experience, particularly in motorsports and racing. However, its current task is to paint itself as a luxury car manufacturer. The brand has seen its fair share of ups and downs in its 113-year history and currently operates as a sub-brand of Stellantis.
For the last three decades, the automaker’s sales have been down overall, so to combat this, company CEO Jean-Philippe Imparato announced the automaker will launch a new model every year between 2022 and 2026, vowing to go entirely electric by 2027.
That journey hasn’t gone according to plan so far, as its first “electrified” offering – the Tonale plug-in hybrid – faced several delays before finally launching in the US market in 2022. Despite the automaker’s all-electric transition sitting a mere three years away, we still have not seen an all-electric option. Unless you count the 33 electric Stradale supercars, it’s currently developing.
Looking ahead, the automaker works to deliver larger, more luxurious models to create a greater presence in the US to compete with companies like BMW. Alfa Romeo also promised larger electric SUVs for US customers – the first of which will debut in Italy this spring.
Today, we’ve learned that Alfa Romeo’s first electric SUV will be called the Milano.
Alfa Romeo’s first SUV will be called the Milano
Alfra Romeo posted the teaser image seen above, unveiling the model name of its first all-electric offering alongside a date we can expect to see it in full – April 2024. Named after the Italian city of Milan, where Alfa Romeo was founded, the Milano will be the automaker’s first entry in the B-Segment of Europe – the largest in the market.
While this will be Alfa Romeo’s first BEV, the SUV will later come as a hybrid combustion version. That being said, the Milano is expected to be the final Alfa Romeo to come in a combustion variant before the Stellantis sub-brand goes 100% electric. Alfa Romeo CEO Jean-Philippe Imparato spoke to the announcement of the Milano SUV and what it represents for the future of the brand:
With the arrival of Milano in 2024, Alfa Romeo completes a line-up capable of meeting the desires of all our enthusiasts and much more. Milano is intended as a symbolic ‘welcome back’ to all our Alfisti fans. As owners of the Giulietta and Mito, they have been waiting to confirm their love for Alfa Romeo. It also serves as a ‘welcome’ to anyone looking for a unique sporting experience in this segment and the distinctive beauty of Italian design.
Milano is the first milestone in the brand’s transition process to electric and, like the Tonale, has the important task of further strengthening Alfa Romeo’s global presence.
Here’s what Alfa Romeo’s production pipeline looks like for the next three years as part of its “from 0 to 0” strategy, which includes the official debut of the electric SUV as its next milestone:
- 2024 – Debut of the first 100% electric Alfa Romeo Milano SUV
- 2025 – Unveiling of the first Alfa Romeo vehicle to arrive exclusively 100% electric
- 2027 – The Alfa Romeo range becomes a 100% electric brand
The automaker reports that 2023 global sales are up 34% compared to 2022 (up to November), led by an encouraging 53% increase in sales throughout the EU. All eyes will be on Milan in April 2024 to see what Alfa Romeo brings to the table with its first all-electric offering.
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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
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