Tag Archives: Luxury

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Bentley Turns Light Into Luxury: The Futuristic Craft Behind Mulliner’s Animated Welcome Lamps

For more than a century, Bentley has defined luxury with wood so polished you can see the future in it, leather so supple it could pass for a tailored suit, and metalwork fit for a fine Swiss chronometer. But now, the Crewe craftsmen have added a surprising new medium to their palette: light.

And not just any light — curated, animated, digitally sculpted light.

Originally developed for the ultra-exclusive Mulliner Batur, Bentley’s first-ever use of Digital Light Processing (DLP) in a road car is now making its way into the brand’s broader coachbuilt offerings. The result? Customers can design their own animated welcome projection — a personal light show that appears on the ground as they open the door. Think of it as the automotive equivalent of a signature handshake, crafted from photons.

Light as Luxury Material

Bentley calls the concept “digital craftsmanship,” and for once, the marketing speak undersells it. What the brand is doing here is redefining how technology and traditional coachbuilding can intersect.

Every projection features a two-part animation:

  • An intro sequence triggered when the door first swings open
  • A continuous loop that plays afterward

Bentley’s designers aren’t just sketching pretty patterns — they’re pulling motifs from the cabin and exterior and giving them motion. Embroidered feathers can flutter to life. Initials can sweep across the pavement in a handwritten flourish. Even bespoke themes can be crafted for special commissions.

Case in point: a recent Mulliner collection inspired by the Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest. The headrest embroidery and dashboard’s musical cues became the backbone of an animation featuring warm central light surrounded by swirling musical notes — a bit of nighttime theatre every time you step inside.

Microscopic Mirrors, Massive Impact

If this all sounds like projector tech, that’s because it is — extremely advanced projector tech.

Bentley’s system uses three colored light sources that pass through five lenses and two prisms before striking a tiny 8 mm² Digital Micromirror Device (DMD™). This silicon chip contains 415,800 mirrors, each only 16 microns wide — roughly one-fifth the width of a human hair.

These mirrors can tilt thousands of times per second. When they’re “on,” they reflect colored light out toward the ground. When “off,” they aim light into a heat sink so the image stays razor-sharp. Each mirror is a pixel, and together they form animations detailed enough to match the rest of the car’s handcrafted identity.

If luxury used to rely on rare materials, Bentley argues the next frontier is mastering how those materials behave in motion.

The Future: Where Craft Meets Code

Bentley’s designers are already exploring how far this idea can go. What happens when lighting, interior design, and UI all merge into one cohesive artistic language? What if the emotional resonance customers expect from woodgrain or leather stitching could also come from curated moments of digital animation?

This isn’t about more screens or brighter LEDs; it’s about using technology to amplify the emotional signature of a Bentley. A new kind of luxury — less about physical mass, more about sensory experience.

And while animated welcome lamps might seem like a small flourish, they hint at something bigger: a future where the line between coachbuilding and coding gets beautifully blurred.

Bentley built its reputation on craftsmanship you can feel. Now it’s working on craftsmanship you can see — even before you step inside.

Source: Bentley

News

Audi’s Luxury Reset: Fewer Options, Better Cars

One of the guilty pleasures of buying a luxury car has always been playing around in the configurator. Fancy paint? Check. Special leather? Of course. An obscure steering wheel option that you’ll never notice after the first week of ownership? Why not—it’s only money. Audi, however, thinks this buffet-style approach has gone too far.

CEO Gernot Döllner recently told Auto Express that the brand is gearing up for a serious decluttering of its options lists. The reason? Simplicity—and not just for the bean counters in Ingolstadt. According to Döllner, Audi customers can expect fewer but better choices. Take steering wheels, for example: right now, the Volkswagen Group catalog has more than 100 different variations. Going forward, Audi thinks it only needs three or four. That’s not cost-cutting for the sake of it; the goal is to funnel the savings into higher-quality touchpoints.

Chief creative officer Massimo Frascella spelled it out: “We can build better quality elements because we’ve reduced.” Translation: instead of endless minor trim packages and option bundles, Audi will invest in making the stuff you actually touch—the steering wheel, the switchgear, the controls—feel as premium as the Four Rings badge on the grille.

That philosophy is already visible in the Concept C, Audi’s latest design study revealed in Milan. A baby R8 by way of Ingolstadt’s new “strive for clarity” mantra, the Concept C pairs clean, essential lines with old-school Audi attention to detail. The steering wheel badge is real metal, not plastic. The physical controls use anodized aluminum. The climate system gets its own separate controls—yes, touch-sensitive, but mercifully not buried in a touchscreen menu. Best of all, the Concept C even hides its central display when not in use, a throwback to some of Audi’s best interiors of the 2010s.

Whether all of this trickles down to the production version, due in 2027, remains to be seen. But the Concept C signals a welcome reset. With rear-wheel drive, roadster credentials, and a minimalist cabin, it looks like a spiritual successor to the R8—just in a more accessible package.

Audi’s new focus isn’t just about interiors and sports car concepts. The brand is also reshaping its lineup. The A1 supermini and Q2 subcompact crossover are both headed for the chopping block, leaving the A3 as the new entry point into Audi ownership. But there’s a twist: in 2026, Audi will roll out a fresh entry-level EV to cover the gap.

The broader message is clear: fewer distractions, fewer compromises, and fewer cheap placeholders. Audi wants every car in its showroom to feel like it belongs in a luxury brand lineup. If the Concept C is anything to go by, the strategy could pay off—because sometimes, less really is more.

Source: Auto Express