NASA Awards $1.35 Million Green Flight Challenge Prize to Team Pipistrel-USA for Electric Aircraft
Why It MattersA sponsored prize of this scale marks electric propulsion as a competitive field for light aircraft, though the competing fleet remains a handful of experimental airframes, far from commercial deployment.
NASA awarded the largest prize in aviation history at the CAFE Green Flight Challenge, created to inspire the development of more fuel-efficient aircraft and spark a new electric airplane industry. The challenge was sponsored by Google and managed by the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation under an agreement with NASA.
Team Pipistrel-USA won the first-place prize of $1.35 million, and team eGenius, of Ramona, Calif., took the second-place prize of $120,000. Fourteen teams originally registered, and three met all requirements and competed in the skies over the Charles M. S…
