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What is a VORTEX ENHANCER?

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The Vortex Enhancer began with a simple observation: the little shark-fin antenna already sitting on top of the Shark 6 occupies a very interesting piece of real estate.
Air is already flowing around it, the antenna is already connected to the vehicle, and the shape is already halfway to looking like something that ought to be doing more than merely sitting there.
So the idea is to fit a larger, flexible fin over the existing antenna and turn that dead little aerodynamic lump into an evolving experimental object.
The first versions are deliberately prototypes. They are being shaped, carved, moulded, fitted, driven, watched, altered and driven again.
The profile matters, but so does the behaviour of the material. A rigid fin mounted high on a vehicle could become exactly the sort of thing we do not want, so the Vortex Enhancer is intended to wibble, wobble and, when required, wooblewibble.
It should have enough flexibility to move, deflect and yield rather than behave like a hard spear bolted to the roof.
That movement is not only about safety in the event of contact. One of the prime objectives is to explore whether the fin itself can be made to produce a distinctive, learnable sound as air passes over and around it.
Electric vehicles are quiet. Very quiet.
That is one of their pleasures, but it also creates a problem: animals, children, pedestrians and cyclists may not hear an electric vehicle approaching in the same way they learned to recognise the sound of a conventional engine.
The Vortex Enhancer asks whether part of that missing acoustic warning can be created aerodynamically.
Different fin shapes, thicknesses, cavities and flexible elements may produce different oscillations and different tones.
Large movements may give us the bass, smaller and faster movements the treble, while combinations of the two may create a recognisable acoustic signature — not an obnoxious siren or artificial engine noise, but a characteristic wibble, wobble or wooblewibble that can become associated with an approaching electric vehicle.
The objective is simple enough to explain: make the car quiet, but not silent to those who need to know it is coming.
Whether the useful sound eventually comes directly from airflow, from resonating parts within the fin, from electronically assisted vibration, or from some combination of all three is part of the prototype work. The important thing is that the sound should be deliberate, repeatable and recognisable rather than merely accidental wind noise.
That flexibility may also become useful aerodynamically. A fin that can move is a fin that can respond to airflow.
Different shapes, thicknesses and internal structures can be driven, compared and refined. At this stage we are not pretending those movements have already been converted into some miraculous increase in range or efficiency; the prototype program exists to find out what the fin actually does once it leaves the drawing and starts living in the air.
The beeswax stage is part of that process. A shape can be imagined on screen, drawn as a profile, carved physically, turned into a mould and reproduced as a flexible silicone skin.
Each generation can then be altered, compared and replaced. That is one reason the prototype package includes an 8 year fin upgrade replacement program: the fin you fit first is not being treated as the final answer.
It is the first member of a family expected to evolve. And eventually the Vortex Enhancer may become more than an aerodynamic and acoustic experiment.
Because it sits over an existing antenna, it also occupies a potentially useful communications position. Future versions may incorporate sensing, tuning and signal hardware so the fin can sense what is happening around it and, where practical, send and receive information through the antenna system beneath it. Airflow, vibration, environmental sensing, telemetry and other forms of vehicle communication may eventually become part of the same physical object.
That is the interesting bit.
Instead of adding another gadget somewhere else on the vehicle, we begin with something that is already there, fit a new skin over it, and see how many useful jobs that one piece of real estate can eventually perform.
For now, though, it is a fin.
A flexible, replaceable, experimental fin.
One that will wibble wOOble.
One that will wObble wibblishly.
Sounds intended to help the world hear that an electric car coming.
And, under suitable conditions, one that may eventually wooblewibble its way into becoming something considerably smarter than the little antenna bump it started life sitting on.

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What is a VORTEX ENHANCER?

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