another day, another mission for click�*s ever—so—slightly secret agent double oh, my goodness, it is lara lewington! greetings, l! oh, sorry, i'm late — there was a queue. he does tend to get in the way, doesn't he? nice wheels, though! thanks. one problem is i have borrowed this car and i have got it rather dirty. do you have that eco—friendly spray thing i could borrow, please? think of all that water that you would usually use. well, this nano solution cleans, waxes and polishes in one go. just need a bit of elbow grease. admittedly, the car was not that dirty to start with so it may have been a less pleasant job if there was lots to scrub off. around 2—3 litres of nano solution are needed you per vehicle, as opposed to over 50 litres of water by a car wash. the kit is not available to buy, though — it is used by the dropless service. and it may look pretty time—consuming but apparently, it only takes them 30 minutes to an hour to do the outside of a car. you book a visit via its app and someone turns up at your door and cleans your car for you. what, anywhere in the uk? no, it's currently only in a few cities — including london, manchester and bristol — and it is a lot pricier than getting one of your kids to do it for a bit of pocket money. very useful, especially when there is no time to dry! 0k. shall i move on? please. let me show you something else that cleans without using too much water. so this is the w'air, because it's for cleaning things that you w'ear. now all i need something to clean. and here's something i stained earlier. and the idea is that you just put the dirty bits on this special backing mat on any hard surface and then, you just blast it with water, air and detergent and in theory, the stain should go. now, the company says that 90% of the clothes that we wash don't actually need to be put in the washing machine in the first place. apparently so. instead, w'air can be used to refresh lightly worn clothes or deep clean delicates and avoid wasting water. ok, so is it better thanjust a bit of stain remover and watching something off in the sink? not sure. maybe the clothes don't get as wet, although my shirt did. you realise that this does cost half the price of an actual washing machine? yeah, there is that, too — but at least i got a nice clean shirt out of it, so you can take me for a ride in your nice car now. these ideas may have some impact on our green credentials but to really make a difference, we probably need to be thinking about changing our transport. yes, in the uk, a quarter of our emissions come from the transport industry alone. delivery vans in particular can do hundreds ofjourneys every day. well, dan simmons has been to see one british motor company that you've probably never heard of but which is both making vans greener and making making vans greener. bond music sting. vans need to be cost—effective, reliably always on the road and able to carry a lot of weight, so it is perhaps no surprise that the vast majority are still diesel— or petrol—powered. now, a british company has not just ripped out the engine and added some batteries, it has redesigned the van from scratch with some surprising results. say hello to an all—new electric option which i think looks a bit like it's from the future. and that's because, well, it is — there are currently none of these vans driving on the roads — but the company who makes it plans to take over the world. and the name of this new arrival? don't worry, i've not heard much about them either — it's all been a bit hush—hush. we have three vehicles which are currently in development. we have the arrival bus, the arrival van and the arrival car. we have been working on this for about five years now and we are really excited to be bringing these vehicles into production within the next few months. i've come to the company's huge r&d centre in banbury in oxfordshire. it's so new, you'd probably be able to smell the paint — if they had used any. one of the first things they changed was the panels the van�*s made out of. steel is not in sight — the frame is lighter aluminium to save weight — and the design team created these moulded thermoplastic composite panels, wrapped around fibreglass cloth, that not only save weight but turn out to be pretty tough too. standard metal van. oh, you have a dent in there. you're going to have to take that in. a bit of bodywork needed. this is the thermoplastic composite. hardly a scratch. no? i think you're good to go. it is not painted, so it is not like you have a scratch and even the shine is gone and you have to smooth it out, sand it out and fill it, you know, whatever the process is, spray—paint it. it is just solid all the way through. the panels are cut to shape from the material that is much easier to recycle than steel. that process has some offcuts and those offcuts could be wasted, but we're not wasting any of them. we're gonna ground them down and allow them to be reused in other products in the vehicle, or in other industries. they are worth something and they are valuable. because the vehicles are made in a modular way, they can carry as many batteries as they need for their expected journeys, avoiding any extra weight. touch—free door openings lead us inside. the cabin feels spacious and minimalist with a multi—purpose panel feeding back information from cameras, sensors, and what's left to deliver on board. so we have achieved more volume by getting the floor much closer down to the ground, the chassis height is much lower, so effectively, we have 20% more cargo volume on the same length of the vehicle compared to a diesel vehicle or any other electric vehicle. to further minimise maintenance times, parts of the car needing to be checked and refilled frequently are all under an easily accessible flap. it's part of a keep it simple and keep it on the road ethos. we are designing these vehicles right from the outset with servicing in mind. how can we ensure that components can be accessed, they can be either repaired or replaced very easily, without disrupting or dismantling the vehicle itself? arrival may not have sold a working model yet but for a british motor company, they're doing rather well. the first big order is in — ups wants 10,000. that's more vehicles than british carmakers aston martin, lotus and morgan make in a year together, and that's before one has hit the road. if you want one, well, you're going to have to wait about two years. they've already started making buses that are lighter and easier to clean, which should be on the roads later this year, and signed a deal with ride—hailing firm uber to build cars for their drivers from 2023. one of the biggest changes arrival brings is the way these vehicles are made. just up the road in bicester, the company's latest micro factory is taking shape inside an empty warehouse. rather than a single fixed production line with heavy plant machinery, modular cells will each do a specific but reprogrammablejob — cutting, moulding, assembling — before those parts are shuttled around to whichever is the next phase for that design. now, to get things from one cell to another, they are going to use these — wemos. this one is called 007, funnily enough, and it'll take parts between those various cells to provide them with the components they need to build the vehicle. it is the opposite approach of how car companies like tesla are doing it, with huge giga factories that provide all the cars for a continent. micro factories can be placed anywhere there is demand, creating localjobs, allowing fine—tuning of models for each market, and skipping the importing, shipping or long delivery drives. we can put a micro factory up in about six months. there is — we can take existing buildings, big sheds that you see along the motorway, but six months is really absolutely unheard of, i think, in auto manufacturing. and the company is also looking ahead to an automated feature, already trailing and testing a fully automated van depot without drivers at all. the uk government has funded the project, which it hopes will one day become a big uk tech export. we are right now on the cusp of going into the production of two vehicles within the next 12 months so, you know, the big turning point will be people seeing these vehicles for real, delivering their goods, passengers getting on and off buses within cities so, you know, that's the future that we're looking forward to. people are going know your name. yes. hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week microsoft launched the latest version of its operating system windows 11 as a free upgrade to windows 10 users. media regulator 0fcom said it would take appropriate measures to protect users of sites like tiktok, snapchat and twitch from harmful content. and actor william shatner is to boldly go where some people have gone before. yes, star trek�*s captain kirk is set to journey into space next week with jeff bezos�* blue 0rigin. it was also the week that — and you may have noticed this — whatsapp, facebook and instagram were all down for about six hours on monday, affecting over 3.5 billion people. this was apparently caused by configuration changes on the backbone routers. of course! and twitter got a lot of love during that time. this was all during the same week the facebook whistle—blower revealed herself. former employee frances haugen testified at an internet safety hearing on capitol hill, saying the social network harms children's mental health, stokes division and damages democracy. facebook has rejected haugen�*s claims. and finally, we may never lose the tv remote again. researchers at mit have created rfusion, a robotic arm that retrieves objects. with an on—board camera and antenna, it recognises lost items both by look and attached rfid tag, moving other stuff out of the way to find it. wonder if it tidies up afterwards. self—driving cars are not a common thing yet, one of the main reasons is because of concerns about safety — although saying that, 90% of accidents today are due to human error. but today, one car manufacturer is using data to help make roads a little bit safer while humans are still behind the wheel, and they are doing that by using sensors to track dangerous hot spots. this is a proportional integral derivative controller — pid for short. they're more commonly known as black boxes and are being used today for something other than insurance purposes! yay! ford are working with vivacity labs, using these pids in their cars to monitor my driving in order to assess an area's road safety. my speed, acceleration, rate and harshness of braking, steering — all of these are being measured to see how i react along a route and predict any near misses that i have with other vehicles or people. and when enough cars behave erratically in an area, sensors are placed on lampposts to gather more data — which we will see later. but as a driver right now, i had a bit of a problem with the black box existing. if i want to misbehave slightly or go a little bit faster, i am just going to be constantly wondering "what is it picking up? "is this going to bite me in the butt later?" i am not giving it a true reflection of myself as i am driving. so is that the data they want? we have reached vivacity�*s hq where the data is being processed. remember those sensors we pass along the way? here's a visualisation of what the company sees. it is all blurred and anonymised so no—one is identified, but these lines represent cyclists, pedestrians and cars in the spot, and you can see how they are getting some potentially harmful situations as they cross each other, or as an area gets busier. so they will take this data and present it to the local council to act on it. if you send somebody out to what was happening, even for five or six hours, which would be quite an expensive thing to do, they won't necessarily see the root cause. in this particular scenario there is 1.5 minutes worth of clips from that 1.5 hours we have condensed that down to. for that person, rather than spending 1.5 hours at the roadside, if they watched 1.5 hours of condensed clips from a sensor, they will get a much better understanding of what is the problem at this particular location. peter also told me that councils will probably take a while to know how to process this data and execute plans based on it. but it is not the only stumbling block. 0n the project we have been collaborating with ford, we actually found it quite difficult to get people to agree to put a pid in their car, even if we paid them. if we turned around and offered somebody money they were still turning around saying "ooh, no, i don't want that". as i mentioned before, i was so aware of being tracked, my driving being measured, so it doesn't surprise me that they struggled to get volunteers, managing only 200 and the whole country. but with more modern cars having modems anyway to connect to the internet, is being tracked something i actually had to worry about? the actual act of putting the pid in is not the end solution, that is just the research project. and all our analysis isn't really looking at the individual, it is looking at the aggregated level data. so any other data it picks up isn't really anything that can be used against the driver, is that right? no, no, we don't intend to do that. we clearly spell it out in that consent it is all about this road safety project, trying to find that win—win situation, where the city get something, the consumer gets something, ford gets something. so whether it is the public or councils getting used to the idea, it will probably take some time before this data starts to make a big difference. but until then, getting more connected seems like a good way of driving forward. inaudible. sorry, what? hello? on phone: isaid, have you ever been in a situation when you are in public and want to make a private phone call that you don't want anyone to overhear? oh yes, like when you're on a train and feel like everything has gone quiet but actually nobody is probably interested in your conversation anyway. well, that's a maybe, butjust in case it really is private, you should try this. this is hushme, a bluetooth headset and speaker that connects to your phone, and offers you some privacy. you still have to talk relatively quietly, but i think you'll agree it really does muffle my voice for everyone else in the room. well, yes, you do kind of sound like you are mumbling through it i guess, but it also draws rather a lot of attention to you. this is true. unlike you — what is going on there? i know, we do both look slightly ridiculous. this is the respiray personal air purifier. the idea is it can suck in up to 55 litres of air per minute, it cleans it with a uv—c light and pushes the air back out again, so the wearer gets plenty of clean air. if you're in a busy place you put this visor on and it is sort of like walking around wearing an air—conditioning unit, that is how it feels, especially when you turn it up. listen to this. whirrs. buying all the stuff isn't good for the planet, though. a new eu ruling on the standardising of adapters for new phones and other small devices is hoped to reduce waste. yet when the devices themselves play up, getting them fixed rather than giving up on them could involve the manufacturer or an authorised service centre being able to charge whatever they want to fix them. but there is something which is called the right to repair which is gaining momentum in the us. and cody godwin has more from california. this is just another day for 17—year—old sam. he has made a business out of fixing electronics including laptops, mobiles and even a coffee maker. when i was 12, my dad dropped his phone while he was running, and he kind of came to me and was like "sam, what do you think i should do here?" and he said, "can you help me go to the apple store and make me an appointment?" and i was like no, no, no i saw this on youtube one day, that you can fix your own phone. it has been five years since he fixed his dad's phone. he has since turned his parents�* washington, dc garage into his professional repair shop, where people across the country send him their devices to be fixed. but it is not always an easy fix. many manufacturers don't provide the instructions or tools to independent repairers like sam. and not having access to that information can make for a risky repair. i took a pair of pointy tweezers and stuck them underneath the battery to pry up on it to release the adhesive that glues into the frame, and itjust goes, pssh, and like a bunch of smoke starts coming out of the battery. and you know, if i punctured it any further it would have lit the table on fire. it is one of those things you do once and you will never do it again. if i had a repair manual that told me, you know, use a playing card to go under the battery or a specific tool to go under the battery, and it will release the adhesive without you using a metal, a pair of metal tweezers to poke the battery, it would have been fine. sam believes the access to this information is important and companies should be legally required to share it. this is something a number of lawmakers in the us agree with. it is called the right to repair, and it proposes that consumers have more say in where they get their products fixed, instead ofjust having to go to the manufacturer. and in 2021, more than half of the 50 states in the us propose some form of this legislation, covering devices like your personal tech, from your mobile to your laptop, to medical devices and even tractors. so i decided to give repairing a try, with a little bit of professional help. ifixit is a company that specialises in helping people around the world fix almost anything, from devices to apparel and anything in between. it took me about 10 minutes to replace a screen on iphone 12 max. as someone who does very little handiwork the repair was actually quite easy. it does take a lot of patience, a steady hand and a suction cup that properly sticks, but overall it was quite straightforward. the company was founded by kyle weins after he dropped his laptop while in university and struggled to find instructions on how to fix it. i think everyone should be able to fix their things. in fact i think access to the knowledge of how to repair our things is a fundamental human right. but don't these companies have a right to be like, "you know what, we made these devices, we should be the only ones who can safely repair them?" i don't see any reason that a manufacturer has the right or ability to tell me what i can do with my product. if they want to limit what i can do with it, that they shouldn't have sold it to me in the first place. they sold it to me, it's mine, they took my money! i can take it apart and fix it if i want. if i want to throw it in the river, if i want to paint it pink, i can do that. it is no surprise some of the companies making this product are those opposed to this legislation. part of the argument is keeping their intellectual property confidential, another part has to do with safety. is the person fixing your product properly trained to do so? that worry of course goes away if it is being fixed by somebody that they have trained. but it's notjust about being able to repair a device. many pro— right to repair people also want the option to extend the lifespan of their devices, or reduce waste. one report said 53.6 million metric tonnes of electronic waste was generated around the world in 2019. for every one device i repair, it generates a little bit of waste, maybe a little bit of e—waste and a little bit of plastic packaging for the part. versus buying a new device and you are throwing out the whole device, metal, motherboard, the camera, the battery, the screen, all of that has, i mean it is a lot once you add it all up — versusjust, you know, a battery or a screen. many states in the us have proposed right to repair bills over the past few years, but the only one that has passed was in massachusetts in 2012. it targets automakers and requires them to provide the repair equipment to anyone. while it's only law in massachusetts the majority of carmakers have opted to adhere to this policy in the remaining 49 states. to advocates like sam and kyle it is a no—brainer why there should be similar legislation regarding our devices. that was cody, and it is pretty much time for us to wrap up for this week. but first, i have to ask — lara, what is that whirring? this week i have cleaned a car, you cleaned a shirt, and i am now cleaning my earbuds. this is a prototype of the cardlax earbud washer. the idea is you put a bit of alcohol spray on them first, pop them in here, close the lid and then it spins around cleaning them with a sponge. once you have done that bit, you pick it up, and that final bit of wax can be got off with that brush. look at that. how delightful. and on that note i think we should finish the show and do the final bit of housekeeping which sounds like this. as ever you can find the team on social media, on youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter at @bbcclick. thanks for watching, we will see you soon. bye— bye. hello. there were some bright spots on tuesday. some of us got to see a bit of sunshine. but for many places, extensive cloud was the main weather feature, spilling down from the northwest, thick enough at times to produce some spots of rain and drizzle. and wednesday is looking like a very similar day. it will be mostly but not completely dry, often but not completely cloudy. where the cloud has broken, it is going to be quite a chilly start to the day, but most areas beginning with a lot of cloud, some mist and murk, some spots of rain and drizzle. now, through the day, i am hopeful that cloud will break a little bit. eastern scotland should see some sunny spells. parts of northern ireland, england and wales will see the cloud thinning and breaking to reveal some brighter interludes. top temperatures between 1a and 17 degrees, light winds down towards the south, but it will be quite easy further north. through wednesday night into thursday, this cloud continues to feed in with some mist and hill fog, some spots of rain and temperatures of 9 to 11 degrees. some more persistent rain, though, beginning to develop in the north of scotland, and that's the first sign of a change. this weather front dropping into the picture during thursday will bring some outbreaks of rain southwards across scotland, that rain particularly heavy and persistent in the northwest highlands, some of that rain getting into northern ireland later in the day accompanied by a strong wind and a wind that will change direction and will start to come down from the north, bringing the first hint of some colder air into northern scotland. further south, england and wales mainly dry, often cloudy. once again, 16 or 17 degrees. but as we move through thursday night into friday, that weather front will make progress southwards. you can tell from the blue triangles that this is a cold front. that means it is introducing colder air, the blue shades spreading southwards across the chart for friday. across the northern half of the uk, friday is likely to begin with a touch of frost, and it certainly will feel chillier. but what the front is also doing is it's clearing a lot of the cloud away, so there will be more in the way of sunshine. 15 or 16 degrees down towards the south, but further north — look at that — just 9 in aberdeen. but that colder spell won't last all that long. milder conditions will return from the west during the weekend. with that, we'll start to see some outbreaks of rain. welcome to bbc news. our top stories: adapt or die. days ahead of a major climate conference in the uk, report finds its not ready for the problems caused by climate change. world leaders agreed to work together to avoid humanitarian catastrophe in afghanistan as the eu pledges more than $1 billion of aid at a virtual g20 summit. the governor of texas bars all covid—19 vaccine mandates in the state, defying president biden�*s nojudge, nojob no job policy. ina in a corner confirms that gabby pettito died of strangulation. she disappeared while travelling with her ponte —— fiance in the