The CAFE Foundation (Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency) announced today that the NASA Green Flight Challenge will receive $1.6 million in sponsorship funding from Google.

CAFE will host the event which runs from September 25 to October 2 of this year. It will take place at the Charles M. Schulz – Sonoma County Airport in California and will have a $1.65 million prize.

To win the prize competitor’s aircraft will have to fly at least 100 mph at the equivalent rate of consumption of 200 MPG across a 200 mile flight.

The competing aircraft are a diverse group of prototypes built specifically for this challenge and are primarily powered by electric motors with some biofuel and hybrid exceptions.

As expected, the Obama Administration set an official Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) target for 2025 at 54.5 MPG. While this is down from earlier expected numbers that went as high as 62 MPG, it’s still a substantial increase that seems to have found a happy medium for opposing voices.

President Obama made the announcement today amid some of the most important people in the auto industry. There was also a small parade of eco-friendly vehicles like the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt and several hybrids and eco-friendlier trucks like the EcoBoost backed Ford F-150.

Buckle up. The new CAFE standards are here.

The NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) came together today to release the Federal CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) gas emission standards for car models in the 2012 – 2016 range. The key numbers announced are 34.1 mpg by 2016 although due to air conditioning augmentations that number goes up to 35 mpg. Break this down further into greenhouse gas terms, that’s about 250 grams of CO2 per mile.

The NHTSA is expecting that 2012 numbers will be 33.3 mpg for cars and 25.4 for light trucks and going up to 37.8 and 28.8 respectively within another four years.

Credits will continue to be given for vehicles that run on ethanol, although somehow, owners will bear the burden of proof to show that those vehicles are indeed using ethanol by 2015 to continue to get those credits.

Smaller automakers (those that sold fewer than 400K cars last year) will get less strict requirements while specialty automakers (like BMW and Porsche) will get longer lead-in times.

There will also be some kind of incentive for the first 200,000 electric and plug-in hybrid cars made.

The total costs to car companies to comply is expected to be about $51.5 billion across five years. This will trickle down to the car buyer in an average price increase of just under $1,000. Although the upside is that savings at the pump (and the environment) should be approximately $3,000.

The New York Times is reporting that the Obama Administration is planning to announce a new set of CAFE standards tomorrow, which will enforce stricter regualtions for vehicle mileage on a federal level. The plan is expected to combine California’s toughest emission regulations with federal law. This will see the national fleet mileage moved up to 42mpg for cars and 26mpg for light trucks by 2016. Current standards are set at 27.5mpg and 24mpg respectively.

According to Politico, the Obama Administration isn’t expecting an resistance from the auto industry on this as it was hammered out over meetings with several states as well as representatives of many of the major domestic and foreign car manufacturers.

The first thing that jumped out to us was that the mileage requirements for the cars was incredibly strict while it seems that light trucks got off extremely easy.

Interestingly, there aren’t many vehicles out there today that would manage to operate under 42mpg. But this is arguably exactly the kind of push the united States needs to get car manufacturers working in the right direction. Necessity is the mother of invention after all.

Expect more details on the new plan when it’s officially announced tomorrow.