Bentley EXP 15 looks deep into Crewe's electric future
British brand reveals latest concept designed to reinvent the traditional saloon car
This is not Bentley’s first all-electric car – you will have to wait until 2026 for that. Neither is it a preview of that car or any future Bentley for that matter. The Bentley EXP 15 is a design concept to celebrate the opening of the company’s new design studio and provides a glimpse of what Robin Page, Bentley’s Design Director, and his team are working on for future Bentley cars, regardless of their powertrain.
Inspired by the 1930 three-seater Speed Six coupe ‘Blue Train’ that then CEO Woolf Barnato used to race the Blue Train from Cannes to Calais, EXP 15 is a look forward, a vision car that establishes a design language for future Bentleys. From 2035, these will be all-electric as current CEO Dr Frank Walliser sticks to the company’s Beyond 100+ plan. Even he admits, however, that the market is moving so quickly with instability and unpredictability that the 106-year-old company needs to remain agile and prepared to adapt.
As its name suggests, this is Bentley’s 15th experimental prototype, although the first no longer exists as W O Bentley cannibalised it to make EXP2. Its design has been led by Robin Page, Bentley’s Director of Design. “It’s an elevated saloon design” he explains, “very much in the ethos of the Speed Six ‘Blue Train’ and provides that elevated driving position that SUVs offer but retains a sleek, more athletic design of a traditional Bentley saloon or coupe. It’s important we look forward with every EXP project and not simply repeat a current design trend.” Is this the beginning of the end for the SUV? Don’t get your hopes up.
Being a concept, the design boundaries are pushed much further than any production car can ever do. So there’s three doors but not in a traditional hatchback configuration, rather there’s a single door on the driver’s side and two on the passenger side (don’t mention the Mini Countryman) to aid egress and ingress along with the opening section of glass roof to allow you to step out rather than fall out.
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The upright front grille is finished with diamonds that are backlit, the lighting colour changing as you approach and influenced by the colour of your clothing. Its five-metre-plus length provides the imposing footprint concept cars require to accommodate the 23-inch wheels and Pirelli tyres that are fitted. Its overall size makes the early Noughties Brooklands look like an Alpine A110.
Inside the concept extremes continue, with a three-seater layout but not how you’re imagining. There’s a driver’s seat with a rear passenger chair directly behind it. To the left of this is the third seat that can be positioned in the rear or the front of the cabin depending on your preference of seating position. Open the split-tailgate and two additional occasional seats pop up for those tranquil moments sat in a field.
The interior is a designer’s imagination let loose. So while the EXP 15 is very much a 21st Century+ car, Bentley has been keen to blend tradition with modernity, so the HMI screen features mechanical elements positioned behind a more modern screen, the former providing mechanical moving ‘fingers’ that indicate direction of travel, sat-nav directions and state of electric charge.
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Yes, the EXP 15 is fully electric with a motor on each wheel, but that’s as far as it goes in terms of technical details.
Resolutely not a suggestion of Bentley’s forthcoming ‘urban SUV’ (a car under five-metres in length is the company’s definition of such a car), which will be revealed in 2026 and on sale early 2027, EXP 15 is a Vision Concept with, it would seem, a short shelf life; its only public appearance will be at Pebble Beach in August. Prototypes of Bentley’s first EV are already in production in the recently renovated and updated building A1, at the company’s Crewe factory.
