Future Re-imagined: The Extraordinary Bentley EXP 100 GT
Bentley EXP 100 GT looks to the future of luxury mobility as most sought-after luxury marque celebrates its Centenary. Share
Bentley Motors celebrates its 100th birthday today by unveiling its vision of the future of luxury mobility at The Home of Bentley in Crewe. The Bentley EXP 100 GT is a physical embodiment of the future Bentley brand, reimagining Grand Touring for the future. Designed from the inside out and taking advantage of an all-electric platform, Bentley EXP 100 GT reimagines the Grand Tourer for the world of 2035. This is a world of shared luxury experiences where passenger and driver enjoy equal status in their enjoyment of their extraordinary journeys.
The cars’ presence and impressive exterior proportions are reminiscent of many of Bentley’s historic Grand Tourers but take these luxury hallmarks into the future. The result is a future vision commensurate with Bentley’s status as the world’s most sought after luxury brand.
The meticulously sculpted cabin is luxuriously tactile, helping to create a harmonious environment designed around the well-being of its passengers. This is seamlessly integrated with the unique AI, known as the Bentley Personal Assistant, which helps the car’s occupants enhance and curate their Grand Tour experiences.
Sustainable innovation is also at the heart of the Bentley EXP 100 GT experience. The car is engineered to create a greater awareness of the world outside, with an intelligently-curated collection of materials including 5,000 year old Copper Infused Riverwood; Compass exterior paint made from recycled rice husks; 100% organic leather-like textile from wine making; British Farmed Wool carpets and embroidered cotton interior surfaces which all create sustainable future luxury, adding to the enhanced reality of the grand touring car of the future.
Luxury Beyond Mobility
The Bentley EXP 100 GT redefines the car as a space for extraordinary and emotional human experiences, ones that enrich and inspire. Bentley’s vision imagines the journeys of the future, drawing on 100 years of expertise in luxury design and craftsmanship that are currently being celebrated around the world in the company’s Centenary year.
The Bentley EXP 100 GT’s sleek and muscular exterior explores the brand’s future design direction. It incorporates the company’s unmistakable DNA, remaining instantly recognisable as a Bentley. The famous R-Type Continental haunch at the rear, the round headlights that overlap the grille in a nod to the famous Bentley Blower and a long graceful body hint at famous models of yesteryear.
However, this Bentley journeys into the future. Made from lightweight aluminium and carbon fibre, the Bentley EXP 100 GT measures 5.8 metres long and almost 2.4 metres wide, and makes a statement of true luxury. This is further enhanced by decorative features crafted from copper and aluminium, both natural sustainable materials, which evoke founder W.O Bentley’s choice of materials to create the alloy for his famous BR1 Aero engine piston that played a major role in securing the air theatre in World War 1.
The driver and passenger doors are two metres wide and pivot outwards and upwards for effortless access. Fully open, they rise to almost three metres, adding to the sense of occasion on arrival.
The new exterior paint colour Compass is created using a special Colourstream pigment that reflects a beautiful spectrum of autumnal colours and is both sustainable and environmentally friendly. The pigment is synthetically made using rice husk ash, a harmful bi-product of the rice industry, remanufactured for the Bentley EXP 100 GT to reduce the amount that ends up in landfill waste.
The Bentley EXP 100 GT’s expressive exterior lighting is both dynamic and dramatic. A focal point is the smart, illuminated matrix grille and Flying B mascot which come to life as one approaches the car, light playing across the grille, through the mascot and along the bonnet central spine of the car and into the cabin itself. The car literally comes alive.
At the rear, a ‘horseshoe’ section of the boot is a 3D OLED screen on which lighting effects can blend in with the rear lamps.
Inside a luxurious cockpit, Bentley craftspeople have taken handcraftsmanship of materials to an as yet unseen level, setting the new benchmark for luxury interiors.
The finest natural materials such as wood, leather and glass are seamlessly blended with light, creating a unique interior environment that boosts the physical and mental well-being of passengers.
Exquisite materials graduate and flow throughout the handcrafted cabin of the Bentley EXP 100 GT. For example, the embroidery pattern of the sustainable textiles and leather complement the pattern of the grain in the naturally-felled wood veneer. These traditional, tactile materials reconnect passengers with the authentic, natural world around them.
Imperceptible joins between different materials such as wood, leather and wool allow an overall design motif to flow across all these surfaces. The materials are brought together by design, a seamless blend of patterns and forms, textures and colours. Glass flows into metal, into wood and into leather.
Light is core to life and in the Bentley EXP 100 GT it is harvested from the surrounding environment via an innovative glass roof embedded with prisms that collect light and transfer it into the cabin using fibre optics. The use of harvested natural light and synthesised light offers a new approach to enhancing wellness on board.
The Bentley Personal Assistant is a centre piece of the main console and visualised using illuminated crystal from Cumbria, England. Ambient lighting can also be modified to recreate a specific mood or exterior environment, while additional effects are delivered through projection mapping onto trim panels, such as door pads.
Intelligent, Adaptable Biometric Seating can be configured in three different ways, depending on whether the owner is driving or using autonomous mode. Biometric sensors monitor temperature, passenger position and environmental conditions to deliver the ultimate in comfort, whatever the conditions.
Bentley Personal Assistant pre-empts passenger needs and can even maximise comfort based on its knowledge of its owner. For example, reactive seat surfaces respond to passenger position during driving, automatically offering more support when the need is sensed.
In addition, biometrics are embedded throughout the Bentley EXP 100 GT to track eye and head movements, even blood pressure. It represents the future of customised, in-car comfort far beyond any seating experienced in a modern-day car.
An intelligent future for Grand Touring
Enhancing the occupants experience of their extraordinary journey in the Bentley EXP 100 GT is the Bentley Personal Assistant AI. This advanced, intelligent system defines the Grand Tourer of the future as it delivers a highly personalised experience to the passenger based on five distinct modes with individual characteristics: Enhance, Cocoon, Capture, Re-Live and Customise. Interaction with the AI is made through hand gestures made to the front or rear Cumbria Crystal interfaces that intuitively interpret the commands.
Enhance harvests inputs from the outside environment, such as light, sound, smell and air quality, offering a holistic grand tour, and a feeling of open top motoring from under the glass canopy.
Cocoon creates a protective space, including air purification and glass areas that turn opaque for privacy; while Capture records experiences from both inside and outside the car which become part of your car’s unique history.
Re-Live replays highlights of your Grand Tour, while Customise combines elements of all the different modes and are individually selected by the driver or passenger.
Making a material difference to Sustainable Innovation
Bentley has collaborated with carefully selected industry experts to provide exceptional materials in the Bentley EXP 100 GT. All use sustainable and innovative techniques for customers who are environmentally-conscious and ethical in their brand choice.
Among them is the remarkable Copper Infused Riverwood, a sustainable wood from naturally fallen trees that has been preserved for 5,000 years in peat bogs, lakes and rivers. The Riverwood features in the cabin and has been sourced from The Fenland Black Oak Project, a British organisation set up to preserve this material for future generations.
Hand and Lock is the London-based embroidery company that employs exquisite, traditional techniques that date back to 1767 and are used on Royal and Military Dress uniforms. Their techniques are primarily used on the door panels of the Bentley EXP 100 GT, creating a seamless integration between different materials and a beautiful contemporary embroidery pattern.
Bridge of Weir Leather of Scotland works with specifically selected, locally sourced hides for Bentley to create a soft, natural leather enhanced by its environment. With the ultimate Super Natural finish, this will be Bentley’s benchmark for future luxury alternative materials.
Finally, in an exclusive collaboration, Bentley has used the by-products of wine-making to create the future of luxury eco-materials, creating a leather-like seating material which is 100 per cent bio-based.
Visit Bentley Motors – bentleymotors.com
