Bentley has unveiled a striking ultraluxury electric concept car with three seats and an interior that artfully blends mechanical and digital elements.
Revealed at Bentley’s new design studio in Crewe, England, the EXP 15 is not intended for production but hints at the British brand’s future styling direction.
The EXP 15 takes inspiration from Bentley’s early 20th-century grand tourer heritage and interprets it in a modern way. The concept car has an iconic upright grille, long “endless” bonnet and rearward cabin reminiscent of the 1930 Bentley Speed Six Gurney Nutting Sportsman coupé, often known as the “Blue Train”. This famous Bentley was used by then-company chair Woolf Barnato to beat a luxury express train (Le Train Bleu) in a race from Cannes to Calais in France.
The concept has modern exterior surfacing, hi-tech lighting and active aerodynamic elements. Its big party trick, however, is that it has three seats and three doors to provide extra legroom for the special few, and has in-cabin storage for pets and hand luggage.
“Twin coach doors and part of the panoramic roof open upwards on the passenger side to allow smoother entry and exit via a passenger-side seat that can swivel 45 degrees outwards. This allows passengers to disembark with dignity for that perfect Instagram shot,” according to Darren Day, Bentley’s head of interior design.
“If you look at the car we built for Her Majesty the Queen, it was always designed around the aperture of the door and ‘the art of arrival’. It was really important for us to create that feeling here too,” said Day.
The three-position passenger seat can be moved upfront alongside the driver in Co-pilot mode, slid back to the rear seat or reclined for Relax mode.
When the car is parked the boot space can be used as upmarket picnic seating. Under the large rear hatch are two small seats that can deploy alongside a fridge stocked with cold drinks, which can slide back from the rear seats for luxury tailgate parties.
The cabin mixes physical features with futuristic digital elements that can be brought to the fore or melt away into the background. This includes an update of Bentley’s existing Rotating Dashboard, which can reveal an infotainment screen or rotate back to a solid dashboard surface.
The EXP 15’s full-width dashboard can act as a digital interface for infotainment, or switch off to reveal a veneered wood surface visible underneath the glass. Also mounted behind the screen is a clock-like device with multiple movable and illuminated fingers — which Bentley refers to as the “Mechanical Marvel” as it can indicate the car’s direction of travel, the state of its electric charge and much more — or just be a centrepiece to look upon.
Robin Page, Bentley director of design, said: “We think people are going to get fed up with a fully digital experience and are pining for physical mechanical elements too. By combining the two, you can get the best of both worlds. It’s almost like wearing a beautiful mechanical watch on one wrist and a digital watch on the other.
Page added that the concept car positioned the brand’s new design language and also tested where the market was going.
“It’s clear that SUVs are a growing segment and we understand the GT market — through four generations of the Continental GT — but the trickiest segment is the sedan because it’s changing. Some customers want a classic ‘three-box’ sedan shape, others a ‘one-box’ design, and others again something more elevated. So this was a chance for us to talk to people and get a feeling.”
EXP 15 is conceived as having a fully electric, all-wheel drive powertrain with a long range and quick recharging speeds, but Bentley gave no further technical details.
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