Electric vehicles are facing several hurdles on the road to becoming a viable alternative to conventional, gasoline-powered cars. One of the biggest hurdles, apart from limited range, is charging time, as it takes several hours to fully charge an electric car’s battery, which is not very convenient. That’s why automakers that manufacture electric vehicles, as well as various tech companies, are trying to come up with a solution that would help reduce charging time and make these vehicles far more viable.

Some of those potential solutions include the wireless charging technology, an idea that was recently proposed by Swedish car maker Volvo, and designated charging lanes which could charge cars as they go.

The concept of wireless, or inductive charging has been around for a while, and this method is being used to charge small portable electric devices, such as cell phones. But, inductive charging technology can be used to charge electric cars’ batteries, as well. This idea is the basis of the TEV (Tracked Electric Vehicle) Project, an open source initiative for prefabricated roads that can power electric vehicles as they move along. The TEV Project was founded by Will Jones, a mechanical engineer and owner of Philadelphia Scientific, a company that designs industrial batteries, and some of its proposed solutions are expected to be implemented in the UK and in India in the near future.

The TEV concept has the potential to eliminate the need of stopping along the road to recharge your electric car. It involves specially designed roads that are supposed to be built alongside existing roads, equipped with electric tracks, where cars are controlled by a centralized computer system. Drivers would only have to enter their destination code, and the acceleration, the steering, and the braking will be done by the computer.

Although the TEV initiative is far from being widely adopted in the U.S., there are some similar projects that aim to bring so-called electric roads to the country. For example, there is the idea of a charging system developed by a team of engineers at Stanford University, which could make it possible for electric cars to recharge their batteries while in motion. Their system employs transmitter coils embedded in the road, which send electric currents that are received by several coils installed in electric cars. This inductive charging technology could be placed on dedicated charging lanes on highways, which would only be used by electric vehicles. However, integrating such a system into the existing traffic infrastructure would be a very expensive venture, and the government would obviously be hesitant about committing to such a project before some extensive research is done, primarily in terms of financial feasibility.

But, considering that highways in America are in a pretty poor condition, and they obviously need to be significantly improved in order to reduce congestion and enhance road safety, which requires a very heavy investment. The government has no choice but to build new highways or try and repair the current highway system, and it might decide to install this type of technology while trying to achieve that.

Jordan Perch is an automotive fanatic and “green cars” expert. He is a regular writer for a collaborative community for US drivers.

As more emphasis is consistently being put on worldwide eco-friendly initiatives and as technology improves almost daily, the focus of attention for transitioning to green energy has shifted to a significant technological innovator: the cloud backup industry.

The Predecessor:

Before cloud and online backup services sprouted which largely occurred in the mid to late 1990s, people were using floppy disks and CD’s as their main source of data backup. While on the surface this did not seem to pose any sort of risk to the environment, after just a few short years environmental activists found several flaws in these backup approaches. These disks could only hold a miniscule amount of data, especially compared to cloud backup which use massive servers with the ability to hold an unlimited amount of data. Consequently, dozens (if not hundreds) of disks were needed to store the data for each individual. The colossal amount of energy exhausted from manufacturing this kind of volume for these disks was simply unacceptable. More importantly, according to the CD Recycling Center of America, floppy disks and CD’s were many times improperly recycled and still continue to this day. This assists in the increase of unnecessary waste, while this waste stays in these landfills forever. And the dagger? Hours, if not days, were required to back up your data via these disks. Multiply the number of hours or days by the amount of people using this method and what you get is an unwarranted amount of energy expenditure.

New Business:

The .com boom was a major catalyst for corporations looking to fine-tune productivity. One of the key factors limiting company efficiency was the floppy disk or CD backup process, particularly for larger enterprises that required a full team to manage the data storage.

Enter:

cloud storage. Nevertheless, business was business and initially bottom line profit was the only factor that mattered. Due to substantial growth expansion over time as more people rapidly transferred to the cloud, more servers and data centers were needed to maintain the business and its reputation. Any server down time would have likely extensively wounded the brand name and ultimately profits. However, there was one gigantic problem. Not only mid-sized online backup companies such as MyPCBackup were expanding their server farms, but enormous corporations such as Microsoft were increasing their number of servers by the thousands (Microsoft currently houses more than one million servers in its data centers). Within a short time frame, the amount of harm being done to the environment due to extreme energy usage for the servers could no longer be ignored.

The Solution:

Cloud storage was already helping in the reduction of energy waste as it no longer took hours or days to backup data. Yet, the waste levels were still unjustifiably high, especially due to the fact that there were green options that could significantly cut energy waste levels. Furthermore, after a few years of establishing themselves as major entities in the cloud industry, these corporations now had a stable customer base and readily available resources to look into these more eco-friendly options. As a result, many of these organizations have moved to renewable energy such as solar and wind power to help fuel their data centers’ energy needs.

If you are looking at cloud storage solutions for your data, online backup provides a far more efficient and eco-friendly alternative for you.

Author Bio:

Eric Silver is a senior contributor at OnlineBackupMag.com, a leading web resource on cloud technology. As a technology enthusiast, Eric enjoys reading PC Magazine and working on old computers.