We’ve all been there. You’re shopping for your next $300,000 luxury car, but just can’t find one with an interior that complies with your animal goods-free lifestyle. What is a vegan millionaire to do? Well, according to Auto Express, Bentley has heard your cries, and the carmaker is exploring alternative (but equally luxurious) materials to use in its swank interiors.
“You can’t sell an animal-containing product like a Bentley, with, 20 leather hides, to someone with a vegan lifestyle,” said Bentley design boss Stefan Sielaff at a Financial Times event. “We've been talking to these customers, in California especially, and they're asking us what can we give them. We do a lot of custom-made and coach-built solutions, and therefore we want to satisfy these customers because they are the peak of a trend.”
You might be wondering what Bentley could possibly use that could match the leather in their industry-topping interiors. According to Sielaff, “We will shortly present a Bentley with a vegan interior; it'll give you a luxury sensation but with a different way–protein leather, mushroom leather, jellyfish material.”
“Protein leather” is a fancy way of saying “pleather.” It’s faux-leather like what you’d find on cheap jackets, but presumably the finest fake leather available if it’s going to be up to Bentley standards. Mushroom leather is just that—leather extracted from mushroom caps instead of animal hides. Jellyfish material is a biosynthetic compound that may not jive with Bentley buyers who want to protect the noble jellyfish.
No word yet on when you’ll be able to get your cruelty-free Bentley. Until then, you’ll have to keep settling for cloth seats in some car for commoners...or suck it up and try to enjoy your 600 horsepower W-12 despite the leather.