With luxury car maker Bentley celebrating its centenary this year, the company has unveiled one of the most arresting concepts of recent times – the EXP 100 GT.

Relatively light in weight (1900kg) thanks to extensive use of aluminium and carbon fibre, the Grand Tourer – hence the GT – is an all-electric piece of luxury offering an autonomous driving feature and represents Bentley’s look at just where its future may be in an electrified future.

At 5.8m long and nearly 2.4m wide, it’s big (but still only a two-door) and loaded up with the usual mix of high-tech wizardry and olde worlde-style goodies. There are copper accents; by-products of winemaking are used to create a leather-like seating material which is 100 per cent bio-based; and Riverwood (a sustainable wood from naturally fallen trees) is in there too. Nice.

Paired to these traditional, eco-friendly, features is an AI system – the Bentley Personal Assistant – that works to keep the driver and passengers comfortable by monitoring mood with biometrics and, the company says, it can even detect the driver’s blood pressure. It can alter the amount of light in the cabin, the temperature and other settings.

Powering all this will be a battery electric powertrain that will give the concept some real oomph. Bentley says that next generation traction will enable maximum control via torque vectoring, applying 50 per cent increased power and 35 per cent less mass for more effective cornering. The battery system will power four motors that offer a 0-100 km (0-60 mph) time of less than 2.5 seconds, a top speed of 300 kph (186 mph) and maximum torque of 1,500 Nm.

The company claims that future battery technology will offer five times the conventional energy density and charging the EXP 100 GT to 80 per cent of capacity will be done in 15 minutes. Charging is automatically taken care of by the Bentley Personal Assistant and a range of 700 km (435 miles) will be possible.

Original source: Motor Trader E-Magazine (Aug 2019)

12 Aug 2019