his new Tesla patent puts a spin on old race-car tech. Tesla's patent describes a system of fans to create an area of low pressure underneath the car, which helps effectively suck it to the ground. This helps generate tons of grip, improving acceleration, braking, and cornering. With typical aerodynamic devices, downforce increases with the square of speed. Put another way, a car makes no downforce when static, and maximum downforce at its top speed. A fan system allows you to create incredible levels of downforce regardless of vehicle speed. Even when the vehicle isn't moving. The world first saw this sort of thing on the Chaparral 2J Can-Am car and then on the 1979 Brabham BT46B Formula 1. Like the F1 cars of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Tesla system also uses side skirts to help seal off the underside of the car, which provides a massive increase in downforce by maintaining that low-pressure area. This system has multiple skirts for the sides and front of the car. In "high-downforce" mode, the system deploys all the skirts. That's great on a smooth surface, but it's hard to maintain that aero performance on bumpy roads. In its other mode, the system retracts the front and rear skirts and leaves the side skirts in place, creating a "modified bounding region" that allows for more air to flow under the vehicle. At the same time, Tesla uses its fans to tailor downforce levels. The automaker says it can do this by enabling or disabling fans, changing the speed of the fans, or even modifying the ducting that directs airflow at any given time. It even uses the car's onboard electronics, sensors, and navigation data to define fan speed and skirt height like some sort of intelligent, performance-oriented Roomba (with a serious taste for G-Force instead of whatever's under your couch). This new patent is a masterpiece of automotive nerdery that clearly draws inspiration from track weapons like the the 2J, BT46, GMA T.50 and McMurtry Speirling. I'll admit that this patent is actually pretty genius. It blends over-engineered tech with modern engineering and some old-school race car vibes. I can only imagine what kind of break-neck acceleration something with a ton of instant torque and insane grip can actually achieve. Get the best news, reviews, columns, and more delivered straight to your inbox.