Air flap apparatus having a shifting drum having control grooves on the enveloping surface

An air flap apparatus for a motor vehicle, the air flap apparatus comprising at least one frame having an air passthrough opening embodied therein and a plurality of air flaps that are mounted movably on the at least one frame and at least project into the air passthrough opening or span it;

• the plurality of air flaps being movable between two operating positions, an open position and a closed position;
• the plurality of air flaps covering a smaller proportion of the air passthrough opening in the open position than in the closed position, when the air passthrough opening is viewed in a direction orthogonal to it;
• the air flap apparatus comprising a driving force source by way of whose driving force the plurality of air flaps are drivable to move between their operating positions;
• the air flap apparatus further comprising at least two sub-groups of at least one air flap each, which are displaceable separately from one another between their operating positions but are drivable by the shared driving force source;
• there being arranged between the driving force source and the at least two sub-groups a gated control configuration which in order to transfer driving force to different sub-groups comprises, on a groove carrier drum rotatable around a rotation axis, at least two control grooves, embodied separately and arranged at a distance from one another, into each of which a control pin penetrates, each combination of control pin and control groove being motion-transferringly coupled to a different one of the at least two sub-groups,
• wherein the at least two control grooves are embodied on a circumferential enveloping surface of the groove carrier drum at an axial distance from one another with reference to the rotation axis, and are coded in such a way that for two sub-groups, they permit at least four different combinations of operating positions.