Aside from cause millions of car geeks (like me) to waste many hours of valuable time pouring over forum threads like this one, what else does it do? Nobody knows for sure, but here is my theory: Looks to me like a powerful IR light. This makes sense as the IR camera mounted beside it requires an IR source. Yes, it’s big and clunky, but this is the most plausible answer. Driving fast at night is scary. Seriously scary. And dangerous. And yes, I’ve done it. Anything you can use to give you advance warning of animals in the road (etc.) from a distance is good. At speed, a standard night-vision system (GM’s for example) is not must good. It does not see far enough. This looks to me like some sort of one-of-a-kind IR system. Nothing else front-mounted makes sense. I have to wonder though why is it so aerodynamically inefficient? It almost looks like it has a housing which has been removed. It would be easily damaged if not protected…

My $0.02.

You don’t need some fancy ass device to generate sound wave, which is what infrasound waves are, its just compressions and rarefactions in the air.

If i wanted to i could pull up a signal generator in protools and select any signal between 1-20hz and its not going to do anything, rarefactions and compressions that far apart wont do shit.

Do it bring up a frequency generator, crank the velocity of the wave and see what happens, because thats creating infrasonic waves. nothing fancy here.

I’d say it is not a radar type of system, because it would have no purpose on the road. There are active radar jammers (Phantom RCD) and a radar jammer is not a camera, it sends out a frequency.

That leaves the FLIR theory. This is possible, but why? Large military spec LWIR cameras may need to be cooled. Not all of them need it. The need for cooling and the design of the unit could be a LWIR. However, the need for a military spec LWIR doesn’t make any sense for these reasons:
1. There already is a LWIR system designed for vehicles. It however doesn’t need to be cooled, isn’t a large bulky object, and has a spectrum range of 8 to 14 micrometers. http://www.atncorp.com/flirsystem-thermalimager-flirpathfindir-ntsc.
Why redesign the wheel? This is used by LE, so it should be plenty for a rally car.
2. Military LWIR FLIR systems are designed to give high resolution video to the controller. This video is then displayed on a computer monitor or projected onto a screen. When projected onto a screen, the high resolution of these cameras allow for the viewer to be able to recognize what they are looking at.
3. In order for a military spec LWIR FLIR system to be of any real value to a rally car, the video would need to be either on a laptop or projected onto the windshield. The laptop, although hooked up to the device, would be a bad idea for the driver. In order for a FLIR thermal imaging system to help a driver, the driver has to be able to see it in front of him, in his line of vision while driving. The laptop therefore would have to be on the dash while driving. The only place a laptop could rest safely on the dash is in the middle of the dash. While this does allow for the driver to be able to view the Njection, Google Earth, etc and the thermal image software, it would be distracting. If you are counting on a thermal image to help you drive over 100 MPH at night, it needs to be in your direct line of sight on the road ahead of you. So a small A/V receiver, not a laptop, is needed or use a HUD method below.

This leaves a heads up display. In order for a FLIR system of that size to be useful, the image being viewed by the driver would need to be rather large. The video would have to be projected by either a state of the art HUD system that can manage the entire windshield (not likely) or a projector hooked up to the laptop would have to be mounted in the rear window so it can project the video onto the whole windshield. I did not notice a projector in the rear windshield.

The most beneficial use of FLIR in a vehicle is to have a small HUD or A/V receiver to display the thermal image video feed. The ATN system does just that. So the use of a military spec LWIR FLIR system that uses 7kW of electricity is just plain stupid if it didn’t take up the whole windshield. I didn’t see anything in that car with the ability of doing that. Not to mention that fancy noise ornament probably cannot handle 7kW without frying. The cooling may help, but in exposed conditions I doubt it would help. For a system of that size to handle 7kW, it would most definitely need be cooled with a cryogenic fluid. The problem is, cryogenic fluids cannot remain cold in an exposed condition. Those green tubes cannot do that outside of a laboratory and in driving conditions. In order to keep a cryogenic substance cold enough to remain a cryogenic substance outside of a lab, the cooling system would take large amounts of energy. Then the FLIR system uses 7kW on top of that? Sorry, no car out there can make enough energy to meet the demands of that system. You could use an amplifier to get 7kW, but that still leaves you with the problem of providing enough energy to run the cooling system.

So in the end, I’d say it is purely a decoration intended to intimidate. If it does actually work at 7kW and has a cooling system, the creator of that system would already have public with its purpose and how it was implemented in the R8. If it is a FLIR system, the creator is an idiot. He only accomplished redesigning the wheel in a bulker, less efficient form.

The thing is, the device is titled as a Infrasonic wave pulse generator. In other words, an Infrasonic generator. However, these devices are speakers. I don’t see a speaker anywhere on that device. The use of the device wold have similar results to a LRAD on the road. Do your homework on infrasound testing done by the military:
http://www.lowertheboom.org/trice/infrasound.htm
So if it is an infrasonic generator, somehow I cannot conceive of due to a lack of a sub-woofer, the driver is still an idiot.

Which leads me back to my conclusion that it is an elaborate decoration clogging up the grill. The owner, Andre Betz, either is an idiot for trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to LWIR FLIR systems for vehicles, doesn’t know what a infrasonic generator is and thinking that it would be a good idea to use it on the road, or has come up with something that hasn’t even been discussed here. Chances are that whatever it could be has already been discussed though.