The limited edition Batur projects animations on the ground to welcome its ultra-rich owners
The £1.65 ($2.1 / €1.9) million Batur was introduced in 2022 as the most powerful Bentley ever made. The company continues to reveal its secrets and today they highlight the car’s signature light sculpture.
Essentially a high-tech welcome animation, the light sculpture is projected onto the ground when the doors are opened. While some models project images or logos onto the ground, the animations distinguish the Batur.
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 lenses and two prisms in a highly sophisticated 8mm2 digital micromirror device. The light signal is then focused by five more lenses, displaying the animation on the ground as the doors open.”
The company expanded on this by saying that the digital micromirror device is a small silicon chip that features 415,800 mirrors that are made of aluminum and are just 16 microns wide. That’s about one-fifth the width of a human hair.
Although the mirrors are small, their movement makes it possible to produce a moving image. As Bentley noted, because the mirror and hinge are so small, “they can respond thousands of times per second, with each mirror providing one pixel in the animation.”
More: Bentley Mulliner Batur debuts as the most powerful model in the company’s history
Light falls on these mirrors and is reflected back into the projector or onto the ground. The idea is a bit like turning individual pixels on and off. Bentley also noted that the car is the first to use Digital Light Processing technology to welcome occupants, as it is largely relegated to adaptive headlights and head-up displays.
Although the Batur is limited to 18 units, lighting animations may be featured on future models. As Bentley teased, they’ve focused on leather, metal and wood for the past hundred years, but now they see light as the next ‘material’ that will “play an important role” in their design language. The automaker didn’t go into details, but noted that the new projection system allows for “endless possibilities,” including the option for custom welcome animations.
