Bentley is previewing its all-electric future with a dramatic concept car dubbed the EXP 15.
Crikey! That's striking…
It certainly is. The EXP 15 has been designed to be an 'elevated sedan' in Bentley's words, potentially taking the best from saloon and SUV designs. It starts with a dramatic front end, where the slim LED lights have been pushed right out to the side, leaving the centre of the fascia free for a large, but largely ornamental, grille. There's then a long, traditionally Bentley bonnet, which leads into a vast cockpit that tapers, in a 1930s style, towards the rear. It's a style that might not sit entirely well with traditional Bentley fans, but then again we said that about the original Bentayga concept, and look how that turned out.
Is this a serious production car?
Not really, but Bentley says that it does “provide clues to the brand's first full-electric production car being revealed 2026.” Inside, there's a different take on car cabins, thanks to a three-seater layout, said to be inspired by the original 1930 'Blue Train' Bentley coupe, owned by legendary Bentley chairman and three-times Le Mans winner Woolf Barnato. That Blue Train car - which raced and beat the famed 'Blue Train' from Cannes to Calais - had a unique three-seat layout too.
In the EXP 15, the seating layout is very interesting. According to Bentley: “One door on the driver's side opens to the driver's seat plus a cocooning rear seat behind, while twin coach doors and part of the panoramic roof open upwards on the passenger side to allow smoother entry and exit via a more luxurious and flexible passenger-side seat that can swivel 45 degrees outwards. The seat can rotate and you step out, totally unflustered, not trying to clamber out of the car like you see with some supercars,” said Darren Day, Bentley's Head of Interior Design. “You just get out with dignity and the Instagram shot is perfect. 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.”
The passenger seat can also be moved around the cabin, from a co-driver's position, to something further back and more reclined and there's even a canopy which folds out over the seat for privacy on a long drive. There's a 'Concertina Floor Storage system' which allows storage on the floor for small objects - or even small pets - to be carried, and even the boot is special. Open the large rear hatch and two small seats can deploy alongside an atmospheric physical lamp and fridge stocked with cold drinks. Perfect for picnics.
How luxurious is the cabin?
Very. The overall design is a bit closer to that of current Bentleys than the outside, but there's still some striking details. According to Day: “We are used to natural materials such as wood, metal - and now stone - in our cars and the human mind can tell whether something's real or not because they're used to seeing trees and animals and natural shapes. So we don't try and over stylise these shapes but design them in unison with the form of the material. 'Bold Gravitas' is all about the confidence to have a generous amount of any one surface material, so you can really enjoy the wood veneer or the beauty of the metal.”
The dashboard is especially clever - there are actually wall-to-wall screens on the dash, but when you want to put those away and revel in a bit more traditional Bentley craftsmanship, you can switch off the screens to reveal a veneered wood surface visible underneath the glass.
There's also a 'Mechanical Marvel', a clock-like digital device that shows the car's direction of travel, the state of its electric charge and much more. 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. Imagine the magical experience you would get if mechanical and digital are overlayed together.”
There's plenty of proper Bentley wood in the cabin, but also a fine silk jacquard textile, and an 'active 3D quilt' made by cutting a diamond pattern out of wood veneer and putting jacquard silk or a hybrid mesh against it. Other surfaces are covered in 100 per cent wool.
What about the tech?
There's some really clever stuff on the outside. Traditionally, forward-facing radars can't 'see' through metal panels, which leads to big, ugly plastic parts, but for the EXP 15, Bentley has developed a new liquid metal satin paintwork finish called Pallas Gold, which uses ultra-thin aluminium pigment that allows the radar to work properly. The big grille, meanwhile, uses clever lighting to become 'digital art, according to Page: “Grilles used to be all about getting air to the combustion engine through the front of the car. But now with light technology changing we have an opportunity to create a piece of digital art. So the grille stays as our iconic front.”
That endless bonnet isn't just a styling affectation either - there's storage under there, accessed by two separate panels which are themselves a reference to classic 1930s Bentley bonnets. Bentley is also playing tricks with the aero package, using twin active spoilers that deploy from the end of the car's rear-sloping roofline and an active aero diffuser at the car's rearmost lower lip
We know that the EXP 15 is designed to be both all-electric and four-wheel drive, but beyond that, Bentley isn't yet sharing any other technical details of range or power, although it's probably pretty safe to expect both to be considerable.