GOOD on paper or work well in the lab. It's quite another to set those advances on the road to improving America's energy efficiency, air quality, economic competitiveness. Limbs and heads whip forward, straining harnesses, then fall slack.
Nobody wants advances in auto efficiency or styling to come at the expense of safety.
And that can shave valuable weeks off the time required to bring a new model into production. Fast, powerful, and innovative, ORNL's Paragon is helping redefine expectations about performance and price. Just what a bold new machine ought to do. The U.S. Navy needed a 150-ton prototype propulsion system for its Seawolf submarine, and needed it fast. The project's complexity, precise tolerances, and tight schedule had foiled the Navy's attempts to find a commercial vendor.