Leather is one of the key materials used in high-end luxury automotive interiors thanks to its sumptuous appearance and feel. The issue, however, is that several animals are forced to lay down their lives.
As a result of this, Bentley has expressed an interest in making use of animal-friendly materials in future cabins.
Stefan Sielaff, Bentley’s director of design, said at the Financial Times Future of the Car Summit that the brand’s growing vegan customer-base inspired this possibility, Auto Express reports.
“You can’t sell an animal-containing product like a Bentley, with 20 leather hides, to someone with a vegan lifestyle,” Sielaff said, suggesting that this new avenue would not do away with animal hides altogether.
Sielaff added that, together with Mulliner, Bentley would present a vegan interior comprising of protein leather, mushroom leather and jellyfish material (although the latter is, well, an animal).
There’s no estimated date of arrival for these new materials, but a Bentley spokesperson says that “this is something the design and colour and trim guys are interrogating”.
