Transcripts For BBCNEWS Click 20201124

This week, we are back on the road in our electric motors. Im digging up the truth around battery tech. Laura has the low down on charging them up. And chris is using all of that power to take some fabulous photos. Welcome to click. I know, im not on the sofa dont panic, though i brought it with me. No, i have not made a dash for it. I am in an electric car on a 300 mile trip across the uk. This is a lockdown mission to find out if an electric vehicle revolution is about to happen. Across the world, governments are pulling up ambitious targets for environmentally friendly transport. The eu aims to reduce its Greenhouse Gases by 80 in the next 30 years and electric vehicles are a big part of that plan. The uk this week announced its ambition to stop selling cars that are wholly powered by petrol and diesel by the year 2030. So many more of us, it seems, will be buying electric cars in the next few years, and lara has some tips for you on that later in the show. But first, im off to a place that may hold the key to the future of european electric cars. Cornwall is known for its fish, its stunning views and its tourism. But it has not always been that way. For most of its modern historical life, cornwall has been a centre for mining. Silver, tin and copper were all pulled out of the ground to support the expanding british empire. At one point in the early 19th century, this was the greatest copper producing region in the world. But, as globalisation took hold, cornish mining became too expensive to compete internationally and so, the mines were closed. But all that is changing. Traces of an element discovered in cornwall in the 19th century have suddenly become rather important. This is lithium mica granite, and the important word there is lithium. As in the lithium ion batteries in your phone, in your computer and your electric car. And some think that cornwall may be the best place in europe to supply it. There is lithium in the Czech Republic, but the boss of one company realised that the rock here in cornwall was made of the same stuff. We followed it up with a field trip and the first rock that andrew picked up had ore grade lithium in it. British lithium is prospecting here in cornwall and once they find a rich vein of lithium mica granite, they plan to build an open quarry, a lot like this one. What is the ecological impact of a mine like this . The footprint of a mine is actually very small, so the mine we are proposing will produce about a third of the total lithium requirement to the uk, should the whole industry transform to an electric one from an internal combustion. And the quarry will be quite modest smaller than this, actually. Most of the development is a refinery. Now, there are obvious advantages of a country making its own products rather than importing them, but there is actually another very important reason why batteries specifically need to be home grown. Lithium batteries are very bulky, they are heavy and theyre a dangerous good to transport. A model s tesla has got half a ton of battery in it, so it is a major component of the car, so battery makers colocate with electric vehicle makers. You picture a tesla factory they have got chemicals and metals going in one end and cars driving out the other. Now, if we want to have an electric car industry in the uk, we have to have a Battery Industry here. So what things can we do to attract a lithium Battery Industry in the uk . One thing is to have the only domestic source of the major component in europe there is none produced in the whole of europe. And so it could be that cornwall, along with the Czech Republic, become vital as europes hunger for lithium grows. So the amount of lithium we need in the uk and also globally is going to increase dramatically over the next few years by so we calculate by 2035, we will need five times as much lithium as we are mining now, so that is quite an increase. But at this stage, Companies Like British Lithium are still trying to work out where the lithium is. So im off to their lab to find out what happens to all of the samples that they are digging out. And in the meantime, lara has been off on her own adventure. My armchair is looking a bit different this week as well as i am also out and about. This hybrid bmw uses geofencing to automatically switch from petrol to electric in a particular location. In this instance, it is when i enter the london congestion charge zone. Id imagine that most people who buy a plug in hybrid want to be on electric as much as they can be, so would actuallyjust preset it to be on electric, unless they were on a long journey, so this idea is possibly a bit of a gimmick but i guess it could help keep cities less polluted. Of course, the benefit of having a hybrid vehicle like this is that you dont need to worry about charging on a long journey. But this week, im going to be looking at a surprise bonus of having an all electric vehicle, and the importance of planning. Theres been a rapid increase in the number of electric cars sold in the uk and im talking pure electric. Almost double were sold this year, compared to last. But for many of us, buying an electric vehicle is still a new experience and there are a few things that you need to think about. Electric is great in the city and over recent years, there has been an increasing number of charging points emerging on our high streets. But for longerjourneys, things can get a little bit trickier. The range an electric car can drive before needing a boost has increased greatly. There are now many on the market advertised to be able to do around 280 miles on a single charge. While all electric cars show a calculation of how long you should be able to drive for, they are rarely accurate. If youre a smoother driver, you will definitely benefit from an electric car. In terms of the weather, that is another impact that can affect electric car range. Generally when it is colder, range falls. You might expect to see Something Like a 20 , maybe 25 drop off in range at the most extreme points in winter. Weight also is an impact so if you have a heavy load, that will give you a lower range as well potentially again in the sort of 25 region. But if you do run out ofjuice on a longerjourney, then most Motorway Service stations do have chargers. And in the majority of cases, they will have rapid chargers. But rapid means Different Things to different cars. It is not only about how fast the charging point, but also the speed your car can charge the combination determining how long a stop you would need to make at the services. Most motorways have 50 kilowatt chargers. An average electric car would be able to boost its battery by 90 miles in half 30 minutes at one. Here on this forecourt, though, the chargers can triple that power. One other thing to know your battery can only do the fast charging up to a certain point. When it reaches about 80 , the charging slows right down. If im taking the car on a long journey, i need to first check to see where the chargers are and if they are working, and then i need to plan for the charger beyond that, in case they are busy. And often when i get to the charger, they are not working properly or they are taken by somebody else and i have to use my contingency plan. So planning is definitely required to drive long distances. But if you are near a motorway and you have some time to spare, you should be ok. In rural areas, though, the electric car revolution may be harder to kick start. There are certainly comparisons with electric vehicle charging infrastructure and broadband. Theres lots of private investment going into ev charge points but its focused very much on urban areas, where those companies are going to make a return. In rural areas where it is more sparsely populated, there are not the same returns, so they not been prioritised by those companies. To boost driver confidence, its now essential that the infrastructure reaches across the country. If its not done right, once again, rural areas risk being left behind. Price has been a major Sticking Point for electric car ownership but in recent years, have they actually become cheaper to own . Weve tried to simplify the figures based on a mid range car over the course of four years. Buying this electric car over the same model with petrol would set you back around an extra a0 . Yet the electric should depreciate less, have lower running costs, and no road tax. You are likely to spend around one quarter on electricity than what youd spend on fuel. Evs are expensive. But if you think about it, you know, if you look at a mobile phone, thats a £500 or £600 device, so actually, what you are finding is that paying for it as you go so the phone, the insurance and the text and data is a way you are happy to pay for that. Its then a mobile device as a service. So with evs, bundling a Monthly Price with the car, the insurance, the service, the maintenance and the energy could be the way, actually, we consume cars in the future. Hello and welcome to the week in tech. It was the week that chinese smartphone manufacturer oppo showed off a concept rolling phone screen which can transform into a tablet. Amazon started selling prescription drugs online to us customers at significant discounts. And twitter and Facebook Ceos were cross examined for the second time in three weeks by us senators, this time facing questions about their compa nys role in the us election. Facebook also separately announced it would extend its ban on political ads for at least another month. It was a very eventful week for teslas ceo elon musk, who saw his personal fortune go up by 15 billion, overtaking Mark Zuckerberg as the third richest person in the world. Also this week, mr musk tested positive for the coronavirus and his Rocket Company spacex sent four astronauts into space. Robot vacuum cleaners could be accessed remotely to eavesdrop in the home, even without a microphone on board. Lidar sensors were hacked on the Xiaomi Roborock vacuum by researchers at the university of maryland, picking up acoustic signals from the room. And finally this week, we saw how a magnetic spray could turn everyday objects like pills into mini robots. A team from City University of hong kong show the uses of the m spray, such as guiding a catheter inside the body or distributing medicine. The objects locomotion is controlled by manipulating the Magnetic Field around it. The spray can be absorbed or excreted by the body, making targeted Drug Delivery possible. This week, ive been putting four of the latest smartphone cameras to the test to see how they stack up. The iphone 12 pro max, the google pixel 5, the huawei mate a0 pro and the iphone 12. I have been using the mini version, but it has the exact same camera as the regular size iphone 12. Lets talk about lenses, and the trendy thing at the moment is to add a super wide lens so you can zoom out and fit a bit more into your picture. I actually prefer a telephoto lens, because i feel that you cannot always get closer to something you want to zoom in on, but you can quite often take a few steps back to get further away. All four of these phones have a super wide lens, but only two of them have a telephoto lens and huaweis has the biggest optical zoom. Heres how that looks in practice, because i saw some ducks in the park and i took these photos from about two metres away. Heres as close as i could get without digitally cropping on the iphone 12 and the pixel 5. Now here is the 2. 5 times zoom on the iphone 12 pro max. Were getting a bit closer. But look how close i got with the huawei camera. This duck was working my camera gorgeous chuckles. And it really does make a difference. Later in the park, i saw a squirrel and my instinct was quickly grab the huawei, and this is how it turned out and this was taken on a camera phone. So the zoom here blew the other phones out of the water. To test the phones in low light, i went into Central London after dark which, as you can imagine, is pretty much deserted at the moment, apart from every now and then youd see a social Media Influencer and their camera operator striking a pose and having a little photo shoot. I went down to the tate britain, which at the moment is lit up for diwali. All of these were taken on the super wide cameras and all of them looked great although i think the huawei just edges ahead because take a look at how much detail it preserved in these beautiful tiles. Those were the super wide shots. With the regular wide camera, apple and huawei both say they have made improvements this year to let in more light. Here are some photos from the wide cameras. Both iphones took a decent shot. The pixel did too although again, it was darker and grainier than the others. And then the mate a0 pro captured this and i was blown away. Look again how much detail is preserved. I also took some Portrait Mode shots here, which came out very nicely. Youll notice the one from the iphone 12 pro max is more zoomed in, because it defaults to the telephoto lens for portraits. I have to say both iphones and the pixel captured quite a lot of lens flare from these neon lights. I did not mind in this particular context it looks quite artistic but the huawei did not have any lens flare. In fact, the mate a0 pro was so consistently impressive that whenever we were taking extra shots or i wanted a quick one done of me in a nice location, id say, lets do it on the huawei its going to get the better shot. Now, all four of these phones also offer night mode and to test that out, we went to St Jamess Park at night, and it was very dark. This is all the iphone 12 could see without engaging night mode. And the iphone 12 pro max does have an extra trick, because it has that lidar scanner to detect depth, it can also take blurry background Portrait Mode shots with night mode switched on. It was very impressive. But whats more impressive is that the mate a0 pro can do this without engaging night mode. This was just a regular Portrait Mode snap taken instantly, without a Long Exposure in near darkness. Lets take a quick look at video stabilisation. The iphone 12 pro max is trying something new for apple it has sensor shift stabilisation, so its moving the camera sensor around to counteracts your hand movements, and it worked very well. In these shots, jogging in the park alongside my friend, the pro max definitely produced the most stable video. Of course, there is more to a phone than just the cameras. The elephant in the room is that huawei still does not have access to google play services, due to that us trade blacklist, and that means many of the most popular apps are missing from the platform, including from its own huawei app gallery, but there is no denying that, when it comes to the camera at least from my testing the huawei one is a generation ahead of the competition. That was chris with a truly illuminating report. Back at British Lithiums cornwall lab, i met with their ceo the man who discovered that first rock to find out how can cornwall might be the answer to our battery problems. Now, it used to be that all lithium came from brines, created by water being pumped up from underground and then left to dry in massive lakes. The lithium could then be extracted from the salt left behind. But all that is changing. As the lithium industry is growing, those brine lakes cannot keep up they take 10 20 years of evaporating to get going so the world has switched over to hard rock, with Western Australia leading the charge. And now we are coming in with unconventional hard rocks, like we see with tesla in nevada, bacanora in mexico, the Czech Republic and here in cornwall, with this lithium microgranite. So the first stage of exploration is we need to drill some diamond holes to see what is in the ground not just at surface but deep underground so these holes are about 200 300 metres each. A diamond rig produces drill core, which looks like this, and it does two things. We can crush it down and get an analytical test of lithium content, but also it is useful for logging it. What is the difference between the lithium that you get here in cornwall and the lithium that there is in australia . The lithium in australia is about twice the grade to what we see here. But in australia, the seams about 3 6 metres thick, where here we get 120 metres of continuous mineralization. Wow so each of these cores was joined on top of each other to the depth of 100 or so metres. Each box is about 3 metres. So we are going down the hole this way, and as you can see, this is continuous mineralisation all the way down the hole. So to work out if this rock contains enough lithium worth mining, they need to send the rocks off for analysis and, before that, their geologist needs to get the mica out. So this is a lithium mica phlogopite, actually, with very coarse lithium mica flakes in it. Actually, with sieving it, we should get some of mica flakes these to separate. This is a small operation at the moment, because theyre still trying to find the best place to put the mine by seeing which drill holes contain the most lithium. This is prospecting at the very edge the modern day equivalent of prospectors at the american frontier hacking at rocks with pick axes and panning for gold in rivers. You can see the quite coarse micro crystals in there still. If you have mica, is there definitely lithium in there, or is it possible that you can get mica without lithium . Mica is a very common mineral so it is very important to be able to recognise which ones have lithium in them and which ones dont. So the crushed minerals from each core are bagged separately and sent off to the lab. The results will show which location yielded the most lithium, at which point they know that have struck gold well, lithium. So the data that we have got at the moment is a good indication that we are on the right track. At what point will you say we will put the mine here . Do you think it will be in the next year or the next five years or. . I think it would be in the next one or two years. Yeah. So the lithium from cornwall may one day end up in the batteries inside electric cars. And those lithium batteries might notjust power you car they might also power your home. Lara has been looking at a scheme currently being trialled on some nissan electric vehicles which allows your car battery to be used as a mini power station. Meet david. He lives near luton with his family and his electric car. But unlike most electric car users, his car battery acts as an energy store that can also power up his home. Im on the vehicle to grid trial. I has completely changed the way use my electricity. I dont have to run things during the night now. It all happens through the charger on his wall, which converts the type of current used to either power a car or provide electricity at home. Each night, david sets the amount of electricity he wants to buy from the grid to run his car the next morning. You could set a schedule. So for example, i tell it that at 6 oclock in the morning, i need enough energy in my car to be able to get to work and back. Whatevers left over in the battery the next day when he gets home from work can be used in the house via the charger. Essentially, im buying my energy quite cheaply its around 15p per kilowatt hour but when i am exporting it from the vehicle, i am getting paid 3ip per kilowatt hour. David is buying the energy to store in his car during off peak times and sells it back during peak hours, when the prices are higher. This pilot scheme is run by the Energy Company ovo, but only works on certain nissan evs. At peak times, when the kids come home from school and turn on their computers and plug their phones in and turn all the lights on, it is not such a big deal. And anything remaining after a days use gets sold back to the grid. Overall, davids made a profit of around £700 £900 in the last year, although most customers on the scheme made closer to £300 on average. And david isjoined here by the other 319 on the ovo trial. But how viable is this project in reality . Customers on the trial are getting the chargers for free, yet to buy one would set you back £a,000. So it all depends on the uk regulator and treasury as to how much you can actually sell this electricity for. If you look at Something Like Hinkley Point power station, which may cost about £20 billion if the sum of all the houses, the 20 million houses in the country at the peak times can use this technology and come off the grid, we might offset building another Nuclear Power station. So then it becomes the simple sums of is it worth giving people enough incentive to offset building a Nuclear Power station . But it is only going to work for those who have off Street Parking and even for those who do, well, your electrical system needs to be up to dealing with it. But for customers like david, who are on the trial, there is an appeal of being both green and economical. I think its terrible that 90 of the time, 90 of vehicles are sitting, doing nothing. So the benefit with having electric vehicles is you have got a huge Energy Storage device sitting on your drive, youve invested all that money in a car, why not use it more of the time, rather than it sitting, doing nothing . That was lara, and thats it for our ev special on the road. Wow it has been an adventure back to the sofa next week. Still, if youd like to get in touch with us in the meantime, you can. We live on youtube, facebook, instagram and twitter at bbcclick. Thanks for watching and well see you soon. Hello there. Monday was really quite a chilly day, particularly so across central and eastern england, where temperatures quite widely only got to around 7 8 celsius just six there in north yorkshire. But one of the things that brings us the biggest temperature rises this time of year are warm fronts. And weve had one of those across the country, south westerly winds have been following, and hour by hour weve seen those temperatures rise recently such that by the time we get to tuesday, 6am, those temperatures will be far higher than the highest temperatures we had all day yesterday, at around 10 11 celsius quite widely. So milder air is on the way, south westerly winds to thank for that. But well also have this weather front which will be one of these slow moving weather fronts its bringing rain at the moment in Northern Ireland and scotland, and it will continue to rain for these areas through much of the day on tuesday, as well. Now further southwards and eastward across england and wales, itll be a mild start to the day, with temperatures 10 12 celsius in places. Quite a brisk south westerly wind, some low cloud over the high grounds, some mist and fog patches higher up, a bit of drizzle around as well. But as we go through tuesday morning, i think the cloud may well break up at times across england. The best chance of that probably in the morning, really, across east anglia and south east england. Otherwise, probably keeping the cloud through most of the day for most areas. And the rain continues to come down for Northern Ireland and scotland. Whether you see sun or cloud, temperatures around 11 13 celsius a little bit cooler in the far northwest of the uk. That colder air is behind this cold front sinking southwards over the next few days. As it pulls away, we will get that colder air lingering around the uk for much of the rest of the week. So heres the chart for wednesday heres our cold front, bringing clouds, still a bit of rain moving southwards and eastwards into east anglia, southeast england, a few showers for scotland and Northern Ireland, it may be 1 2 sneaking down the irish sea, as well. You notice those temperatures cooling off highs more typically around 8 9 celsius for northern areas, still around 11 12 celsius in the far southeast. The pressure then rises, giving us clear skies through wednesday night. Therell be a frost with High Pressure around towards the end of the week. Lots of dry weather with mist and fog patches in the morning, a few patches of frost, but its a mostly dry picture, perhaps generally turning a bit more cloudy as we head into the weekend. Thats your weather. Welcome to bbc news. Im mike embley. Our top stories green light for president elect joe biden as transition process is finally given the go ahead. President trump says his team will do what needs to be done in the best interest of the country but vows to keep up the fight. Joe bidens team issues a statement saying the transition will begin with meetings with government officials on a response to the pandemic and National Security issues. Donald trump has accepted that a formal transition can begin for us president Electjoe Biden to take office