The £1.65 ($2.1 / €1.9) million Batur was introduced in 2022 as the most powerful Bentley ever created. The company continues to reveal its secrets and today they’re highlighting the car’s distinctive light sculpture.
Essentially a high-tech welcome animation, the light sculpture is projected onto the ground when the doors are opened. While a number of models project images or logos onto the ground, the animations set the Batur apart.
To add them to the car, a new projection system had to be developed. As Bentley explained, the system uses “three colored light sources projecting through five different lens and two prisms into a highly advanced 8mm2 digital micromirror device. The light signal is then focused through five further lenses, displaying the animation on the ground when the doors open.”
The company expanded on that by saying the digital micromirror device is a small silicone chip, which boasts 415,800 mirrors that are made out of aluminum and measure just 16 microns wide. That’s roughly a fifth of the width of a human hair.
While the mirrors are tiny, their movement enables a moving image to be produced. As Bentley noted, because the mirror and hinge are so small, “they can react thousands of times per second with each mirror delivering one pixel in the animation.”
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Light hits these mirrors and is either reflected back into the projector or onto the ground. The idea is a bit like individual pixels being turned on and off. Bentley also noted the car is the first to use Digital Light Processing technology to welcome occupants as it’s largely been relegated to adaptive headlights and head-up displays.
While the Batur is limited to 18 units, lighting animations could be used on future models. As Bentley teased, they’ve spent the past 100 years focused on leather, metal and wood, but they now see light as the next ‘material’ that will “play a significant part” of their design language. The automaker didn’t go into specifics, but noted the new projection system enables “endless opportunities” including the potential for bespoke welcome animations.
