London's Top Design Students Showcase The Bentley of 2050

In a collaboration with the Royal College of Art’s (RCA) Intelligent Mobility programme, Bentley Design team tasked design students with formulating thought-provoking designs of the future of British luxury. Under the byword ‘What will British luxury mean in 2050?’, 24 students submitted their designs showing the future of Bentley in the year 2050 and giving a unique opportunity to Bentley design team to assess the thinking behind the designs.

Bentley’s Design Director Stefan Sielaff, an alumnus of the RCA’s renowned Automotive Design programme, explained: “Bentley has always been at the forefront of automotive luxury, and with this collaboration, we asked millennial students for their vision of the future.

We wanted ideas and concepts that could potentially lead us in new and interesting directions, using the perspective of these digital natives – from all over the world – to see things differently. These second-year students are the ones who will be designing the cars of the future – the taste makers in training if you will. That’s why the results of the challenge are so exciting.”

The Bentley Designs for 2050

Remember, 2050 is in 30 years or so. So, it is close, but the evolution of the car will not stop, and four of the designs that students of the RCA created may well shape the future of Bentley. The students were tasked to create designs after Dr. Chris Thorpe, Senior Tutor in Intelligent Mobility at the RCA, asked:

“How do you make tomorrow’s personal journey an emotional experience, as evolving culture, disruptive technology, and personal desires change tomorrow’s car?”

This is what they have come up with.

‘Luxury Soundscapes’ by Irene Chiu

It does not seem that Irene actually imagined a car as much as a serene cabin. Selectively filtering sounds from outside could prove awesome. If you were rolling around in the streets filled with protesters, you just press a button and don’t hear them shouting. Or you could selectively choose to hear the sounds of birds when driving through the forest. Kinda cool, isn’t it? Well, it's impossible at this point in time. In 30 years? Maybe. Irene Chiu designed it to improve the “passengers’ health, wellbeing, and travel experiences”.

‘Material Humanity’ by Kate NamGoong

I like this one the most. So, driving a car with an ICE will be kinda cool. In that regard, Bentley could intentionally produce an electric autonomous car with an additional ICE engine whose mechanical work is actually presented through nice side windows. The thinking behind this is like thinking behind the exposed mechanical workings on watches. Kate provided two slightly different designs of the car that looks positively fantastic. It is freaking perfection in motion hat could only work autonomously mind you, but beautiful nevertheless.

‘Stratospheric Grand Touring’ by Jack Watson

This is something I find curious and intriguing. International business travel will become sort of mandatory, and that will not restrict where people have to live. So why not live in a freaking car - like this Stratospheric Grand Touring. Well, not a car actually as this Stratospheric Grand Touring is actually an electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) craft. A quite luxurious one at that.

‘Elegant Autonomy’ by Enuji Choi

The last chosen design is of Enuji Chio. This guy created something called the Elegant Autonomy. The car Chio imagined has a rather strangely shaped canopy that opens to let people enter it. It is actually a design exercise presenting the possibilities of ingress and egress of the vehicle. Bentley even mentioned that the design is created showcases where the process of ingress and egress lead in the future of autonomous cars.

Conclusion

With a collaboration like this, Bentley is continuously searching for new ideas and new talents in the world of design. The cars presented here showcase fantastically sophisticated and complex ideas that students were able to come up with and provides the Bentley Design team with an all-new look from the perspective of young millennials who live the virtual world of today.

The designs here may never pass the point of imagination, but they do provide glimpses into the minds of new design gurus and show what the future may look like. Maybe not in 30 years, but a bit later.