Electric airplane wins $1.35M prize from Google and NASA

By Rick Marshall Published October 4, 2011

As if the notion of flying around in your own plane wasn’t cool enough, a recent contest has proven that travel by personal airplane can be an energy-efficient dream, too.

It only took two hours and a half-gallon of gas per passenger for Team Pipistrel-USA’s electric plane to complete the 200-mile course and win the CAFE Green Flight Challenge. The Pennsylvania-based team’s achievement earned them a $1.35 million award from Google and NASA.

Recommended Videos

The prize was the largest award ever given by the U.S. space agency, which had help from Google in sponsoring the contest to develop a more efficient airplane.

The winning plane, dubbed the “Taurus G4,” began and ended its 200-mile flight at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, California. The plane featured a dual-fuselage design, a 75-foot wingspan, and 6.5-foot propeller powered by lithium-polymer batteries.

“Two years ago, the thought of flying 200 miles at 100 miles per hour in an electric aircraft was pure science fiction,” said Team Pipistrel-USA leader Jack Langelaan. “Now we are all looking forward to the future of electric aviation.”

Former Contributing Editor, Entertainment

A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…

Topics

Emerging Tech

Yet another study says AI is bad for elections, and the rabbit hole gets worse

AI may be an election bomb waiting for someone to light the fuse

Voters cast their ballots on Election Day

Another election, another study has concluded that asking an AI chatbot for political guidance is a spectacularly bad idea. Research conducted during Hungary’s 2026 parliamentary election found that ChatGPT and Google Gemini offered not just inaccurate but also inconsistent and unreliable voting advice. The chatbots misclassified voter profiles, overlooked relevant parties, recommended parties absent from the ballot, and sometimes produced materially different answers when given the same information repeatedly.

AI keeps failing the voter test

Computing

Samsung’s humanoid robot ambitions are real, but factories come first

Samsung’s new robotics division has humanoids in its sights, although its immediate business is far more practical factory automation

Robot Touch Human Finger

Samsung wants a place in the humanoid race, but its new robotics push begins with machines built for factories rather than homes.

The CEO-led RX robotics division will initially focus on manufacturing robots. Samsung has separately identified humanoids as a priority, although it hasn’t announced a commercial model or explained where one fits into the division’s immediate plans.

Emerging Tech

The future of AI may depend on this one behind-the-scenes change

Running Claude on Android.

Whenever a new AI model arrives, it's easy to get caught up in the bells and whistles. We talk about how much smarter it is, how quickly it answers questions, or how realistic its images have become. But here's the thing: none of that matters much if the AI can't reliably work with the apps and services people use every day.

That's why an upcoming update to the Model Context Protocol (MCP) caught my attention. It isn't a new chatbot or a fancy AI model. In fact, most people will never even know it's happening. But it could quietly make the AI ecosystem a lot healthier. If you've never heard of MCP before, don't worry. Think of it as a shared language that lets AI assistants safely talk to apps like Gmail, Slack, calendars, databases, and countless other services. Instead of every company inventing its own way to make those connections, MCP gives everyone a common rulebook.