When you look at the shape of modern cars, they all seem to be becoming a variation on a theme of a more homogenised form, largely a legacy of the progress in the study of aerodynamics which are obviously the the same for any vehicle seeking to travel faster, or with greater ease through the air in the surrounding environment. And, as a consequence, most car manufacturers are approaching the limit of what can be achieved through the use of various shapes and materials for car panels to this end... if they have not already reached it!


Aerodynamic Air Sculpting

So I'm proposing what I think must be the next logical step in the field of automotive aerodynamics:

Shaping the air in the environment into which the car is driven itself.

The reason for doing this is that this advance in thinking creates a more stable environment into which the car drives, giving more predictable aerodynamic conditions as the car achieves greater speeds, and also improving handling as a result, by matching or cancelling cross wind forces, decreasing air resistance as the car progresses, and thus allowing greater speeds to be achieved with the same measure of power from the engine, and so increasing fuel efficiency and fuel savings.

...and to do it, a measure must be taken that seems on the face of it counter-intuitive... firing air forward into the air through which the car is to be driven.
This may seem like something that would act as a breaking system on the vehicle in motion, requiring an increase in engine power to counter act it, and therefore a stupid concept, but if a narrow shaft of air is blasted at high velocity to some distance ahead of the vehicle, like a long, invisible cone of air projecting forwards, then the decrease in diameter of this air cone meets less air resistance, and requires less force to project... but with the result that by the time that the vehicle reaches the position of the 'tip' of this cone from the moment of projection, the force of it has pushed the air aside, creating a kind of vacuum into which the car begins to be 'sucked through', and the displaced air slips with greater ease over the 'air cone' and car, because the combined profile of these two elements creates a longer shallower shape than the car can achieve by itself, (unless it is a forty foot long missile with wheels in the first place!) and the friction effects of the air on the car reduce, as the air cone provides a fluid aerodynamic 'structure'.

The force of this 'air blade', is proportional to the speed of the car, as the air is gathered from over the entire surface area of the car, and fired through only a narrow aperture, the air accelerates to this reduced expulsion area at higher pressure (like when you cover the end of a hose with your thumb), and is shot out at high velocity... clearing a 'path of minimal resistance' ahead of the vehicle.
...The faster the car travels, the higher the pressure of the air on the car panels, and thus gathered, the more forcefully it is fired forwards.


Air Blade Vectoring

This does not only have to be directed forwards... As I have said, this can be used to match and to some extent cancel crosswinds (and even utilise tail winds as an extra boost)... but also to create down force and increase road holding, or, to borrow an idea from a fighter jet, use it directionally through 'thrust vectoring' so that the path of minimal resistance is created to the left or right as the car turns in those directions, and perhaps using the same technique of a segmented adjustable aperture nozzle on the end of the system.

This is uses a variation on two of the ideas I've previously posted: Space Craft Force Field and Propulsion, and Breathing Car Panel Radiator, but would engender a new approach to aerodynamic car design in thinking of the air around the car as an adjustable extension of the car's design, possibly meaning that the designed shape of the car itself may even change in response.