week in review it is the weekly. rush. to bring down the un brokered peace plan as a shipment of smuggled for the opposition is intercepted this comes as the un is expanding its observer mission to syria in an attempt to. make. his pledge to cut immigration in the first round of the french presidential election. it's the national front for votes that are now up for grabs

in the may the sixth runoff. people are still being treated in hospitals in the ukrainian city of the patrol. series of bombs exploded there on friday leaving thirty injured. as a country prepares to host the. british lie detector experts say the u.k.'s main suspect a russian m.p. wasn't involved in the murder of the former security officer. in london six years ago people. tension between the kremlin and st. well that's it for me and the news team for the moment we'll be back with more in about half an hour in the meantime it is the latest edition of technology update stay with us for that here.

hello and welcome to technology update as more and more people flock to big cities and gas guzzling cars clog the motorways the rush is on to limit the impact of our modern day lifestyles scientists engineers and clean energy and the world over have looked to make a difference with eco friendly solutions and here russia is certainly no exception no sure foreign automakers have grabbed the initiative with alternative fuel cars like those that run on hydrogen and even more traditional ideas like hybrids remain beyond the price range of many drivers are definitely on the way down for more they once were but improvements still need to be made before those that run entirely on the electric power can fully compete with gasoline propelled ones despite recent car of the year awards a number of shortfalls. and that's especially true in major metropolises where it's far from certain they'll be a place to park in the battery and in russia right now there's one company working

to take that worry out of the equation back in february in partnership with moscow's grid operator. the capital's first electric vehicle dedicated charging stations the company may have only got its start less than a year ago but it's already installed more than thirty electric hotspots around the city and despite the chilly winter weather drivers of all kinds of electric vehicles took advantage of this nascent charging infrastructure the first few months were a trial period during which it offered its services to the public free of charge while the project. the company thinks that it will catch on quickly. in general and one for every sinew in our country as much as i say to people i mean about sixty leaf sold for the whole year in france. for that reason plans to continue expanding and make it more convenient for green minded motorists to get a little extra juice and as of the end of april the initial pilot period is coming

and is kicking off its paid subscribers. of the company. environmentally friendly in fact they're looking beyond private drivers to something larger. technology could be a way to help problems. go. from . one of the problems that. public transportation fleet. public people making their rounds in moscow every day . on the environment. governments have tried to reduce.

one of. the. short has a wide range some of which have been adapted to breathe a little more easily. outfitted with a six cylinder natural gas engine which while not totally green is at least more eco friendly than traditional diesel motors. they're twisting and turning conveyor belt located about one hundred kilometers east of moscow. when needed they can. the factory has been in operation thirty three. for the timber industry.

pollution. developing electric and hybrid right now we're the only ones in russia doing that you couldn't do it. now this is a hybrid bus which they developed back in two thousand and eight and managed to save gallons of gasoline thanks to a well known electro mechanical transmission design which has been used in green out of the world over the transmission and this one comes from russia's very own. the hybrid design allows the smaller engine to run at a more efficient rate than normal. down has all the main components of a regular diesel bus with a few extra bits like a generator power control and energy storage block during braking energy and sent

to the storage block on top. ration electric power from the storage unit and generator is sent through the induction motor to lessen the load on the diesel engine the result of this kind of setup is fuel economy twenty to thirty percent of regular internal combustion engines. were moving step by step first we made a hybrid now we're working on an electric bus if the global trends continue this will become a necessity moshe's w t o membership will be a factor for us as well so today we're developing electrical buses. and so here at least sprawling production line there just waiting on orders for their more eco friendly models to come in once they do there's relatively little that needs to be changed in the production process they use one of the existing models chassis and body a different engine in the back and with municipal and regional governments getting on board the green wave those are surely in the pipeline but. are far from russia's

first public transport to find one of the first we have to go back nearly half a century. this experimental bus hit the streets of course it may have looked like just another way to get people around the city but it employed a nod. well wait to collect and store energy was the brainchild of a forward thinking grad student named. by using a flywheel to gather and then discharge energy just about any type of transport could be made more fuel efficient and decades later he's still working away on the passion of his life in recent years dr greeley has taken his updated flywheel energy recuperation system to a company called interest in this research came out of hibernation in two thousand and six after publishing an article with new findings armed with a team of young engineers he's trying to get the industry to rethink the need for traditional electro chemical regeneration schemes and like so many other timeless ideas this basic principle is beautifully simple. just. running

if i will is not moving the way so let's transfer buses energy slow down and give the flywheel running. so you can see how the bus is slowing down and the flywheel stance turning. there is going so now the bus is basically not moving let's go ahead and stop it next let's start the bus again with the flywheel. the more things change the more they stay the same back in the previous century his design relied on a fairly basic variator to collect and then release energy on the basis of his work and demonstrations of the energy savings carmakers in the soviet union initially took interest in his design when push came to shove they eventually decided to forego the notion of gasoline cheaper than mineral water the little reason to pay a little more for technology that was safe but here things have certainly changed

during his new idea a new lease on life. what the what started. this previous model was made basically by hand really regardless it boasted fuel savings of forty five percent the one you can see here. on this post is an updated model has a new transmission where there's a new super very powerful oh this is a promising idea all the major transmission companies are working on it the transmission includes a variable component which could be electrical mechanical or hydrostatic helps you to save ten percent of the overall power but that's not enough we'll hear is small in size in terms of weight it also has a high rotational frequency the key thing about it is that it has a vacuum inside which helps to cards a rotation related para losses by several hundred times will has an inbuilt

reduction gear the power train itself combines the transmission and the engine it is a continuously variable power supply transmission variable component presented series electrical to handle and it can replace both the starter and the generator thanks to the reason no increase in weight this is the latest state of the art to power train concept. so what were those engineers get vance's to dr tried and true method is confident that it has a product that was after major advantages to both conventional cars as well as to traditional hybrids. if we compare our system with conventional vehicle we are going to save forty to sixty percent of. if we compare our flyable hybrid. prius.

to save. fifteen to thirty percent a few it does just by more effectively harnessing the regenerated energy during braking the normal is of transforming the power in city to the battery the flywheel absorbs ninety percent of it keeping that its kinetic energy significantly reduces losses during reef celebration the battery isn't overly strained since it's mechanical power is the primary mover now some people might raise concerns that gyroscopic forces during driving could cause complications but he was testing facility they're checking everything many times over to make sure there is in fact no threat even if someone manages to alter the configuration to get more power out of it but anyways unlike other high performance oriented flywheel setups this one is said to be small enough not to pose any danger and that should all be on show for carmakers to see in the very near future. we are going to demonstrate

a prototype of this very. tests bench in august this year. till the end of this year we're going to demonstrate a prototype of playable unit. and then we have both companies go in to build test and demonstrate. in the middle of next year now it's the start of spring in moscow but during the depths of winter temperatures can drop well below zero all this talk about electrics and hybrids could be short lived if the harsh russian winter proved too powerful so testing just how vehicles would cope with such driving conditions was another goal charging station project. so far. away for. real life conditions it was very cold winter a lot of sort of through it was the coldest temperature. so the good conclusion was

that the. of course arranged decrees. was worse in some cars it was less but cars were the only thing under scrutiny moscow's grid operator also wanted to investigate what kind of impact hooking up increasing numbers of battery powered cars to the network would have what they found was that each electric vehicle used up about as much water as a residential household fortunately has the spare capacity to handle any significant upticks in demand. in order to make a real difference in terms of electrical energy we need to be talking about charging tens of thousands of vehicles in moscow at the same time our energy network is ready for this demand right now we're able to handle a fifteen to twenty percent increase in energy consumption. but a massive fleet of electric vehicles hooked to the grid isn't just

a drain on energy resources they could in fact be used to feed power back into the network during the day the cars plugged in can in theory also give energy back to the grid during times of peak demand and that's good for both owners as well if they charge at night when tariffs are low but spare juice when tariffs are high during the day electric cars could make money as well as. fifty million rubles was spent on building the current electric vehicle charging system at present just like any pilot project it's not profitable yet but we have our eye on the future when there will be thousands of electric cars and then a g. consumption will grow. and as a project moves forward revolt itself hopes to supply their own charging stations for the first stages they've relied on imported energy pumping columns but their office in moscow they're diligent programmers are working on tweaking the internal nuts and bolts to enable a truly smart monitoring and grid system. they hope that

a lower cost providing more incentive for others to go green but before more drivers are willing to make the switch to fully electric vehicles they need to make sure they won't be stranded short of their destination with that in mind a team at moscow state university is working on the next generation battery that breeds offering ranges never before possible and present just about every device you might own from him p three players to laptops to hybrid and electric vehicles is powered by a lithium ion battery and here at moscow state university chemistry department a few chemical engineers have formed a team focused on improving existing types and investigating future directions for batteries and at this testing stand these moscow based scientists are looking into different lithium ion metals to see which work best for specific functions. of the world out there with the battery works basically like a rocking chair. or from one electrode to the other when we charge it

move under the influence of the external current of the device back from the positive electrodes to the negative one at the atomic level of the materials that make up the electrodes are arranged in layers and the ions are sandwiched between these players. is a person limited storage energy depends on the type of material we use for the electrodes in such a battery lithium moves from one electrode to another and occupies the empty spaces inside the matter so if we want to increase the energy or decrease the weight or volume of the battery we're limited by the materials we use. right now there are various types based on transition metal oxides these are cobbled nickel manganese oxide and very popular these days is lithium and phosphate all these materials can store around one hundred fifty to one huh. and seventeen. hours

programs and they're already approaching their theoretical limits. to push beyond the current limitations industry giants like g.m. are pumping resources to give their cars that extra bit of juice with that in mind the american major recently launched a big new development testing a production facility additionally i.b.m. has announced a new with the air battery but has so far been mum on the details about it but the group at moscow state university also has their own oxygen sucking power source that they're working on. we need to replace the chemical composition of batteries with an entirely new one which would allow us take major steps forward for example if we wanted to significantly increase stored energy we need to stop using the graphite for the negative electrode and go back to the lithium metal which was used in the beginning. back then caused

a lot of problems such as the growth of electrolyte evaporation but other safety issues which made it simply not possible to reproduce such electrodes. today we found special electrolytes such as poly meric glass ceramic electrolytes and electrolyte supplements which allow us to deposit the lithium as a failed film in such a way that prevents dendrite growth and enables us to reverse lithium precipitation as well as avoid problems associated with that so if we use lithium for oil as the negative electrode we can increase stored energy ten times compared to graphite. now the lithium the scientists use comes as a byproduct from other industrial processes like aluminum smelting or protest production but here in the lab they slice off bits of the soft metal and then they flatten it out boil strips but solid lithium metal is just one piece of the puzzle

finding the right counterpart is where all the hard work comes in. but based on the past few years of research they think that they finally found the combination that gives them the best performance. of the steeple as we know it explored the who want to use something very white which for the positive like troat the lithium air battery that we're developing house of course carbon spawn and the place of the positive electrode which is where the reaction between ions of lithium and oxygen takes place so my changing the electro chemical system by changing the chemistry of such batteries on one electrode we get three thousand eight hundred million pair hours per gram on the other electrode we get to three sometimes even four thousand mil amp hours per gram and that's compared to the regular one hundred fifty one hundred seventy powers that you get with lithium ion batteries. so all the power will be packed into

a little cell like this but the thing that makes it all possible is one of the least assuming aspects of the battery the solid glass ceramic electrolyte let lithium electrons float back and forth as needed and this is where most research in the field is now focused i mean not look like much but this solid fin wafer helps make the battery safer allowing these designers more flexibility to build a better membrane that ultimately protects against water related explosions but for the time being lithium batteries this potential application is still all theoretical nobody quite knows how undersized experimental versions will work in real life so these lab rats still need to go through the painstaking process of testing every component over and over before they can ramp up to any kind of meaningful production but for them it's only a matter of time that the batteries that fuel all our devices are breathing in air just like you and me. right now we are working on lab cells the cheek of me but already this year we plan to do more. engineering work. and

start building small disc shaped prototypes. but innovation in the clean machine game isn't just limited to major universities in fact some of it's not even limited to this planet one of the most exciting ideas has its roots in space and that takes us to the moscow suburb of color. it was here at a company called tampa where just a few kilometers northeast of the russian capital the new approach to direct drive in a wheel motors was born in ten years in the city that's the heart of the country space industry realize that all experience whether it be from this planet or not could be used to improve greenfield calls back here on earth. i'm going to study we take all the good parts of regular cars and apply them electric vehicles. four wheel drive for example. motors in the front work as

engines to power the front wheels in the black voters are built into the wheels themselves. this is truly rare right now where nobody else can demonstrate this is the car moves with all four wheels and every wheel is controlled independently depending on the traction. if it slippery power is reduced if the speed is too low power is increased this is sets it apart from all other types. secondly the infield motor frees up a lot of space inside the car so a lot of electrical energy is stored in the small space of the lithium ion batteries but. a regular car would go forty kilometers with this got three stuck with the sort of killing that the. ration system built in here as well so the car can go seventy kilometers but all the braking energy first goes to the capacitor and then is used on the car's movement. of. the inspiration for the system came

from designers of moscow's only reusable spacecraft and developing the countless new engineering solutions were found but at the time it just wasn't possible to apply those in civilian sectors but now nearly twenty five years later things like fluctuating testing stand and acid resistant materials have led to improved engine designs and more effective energy storage systems both of which are helping make electric vehicles both better and cheaper. having solved the problem of performing quick turns for the boron spacecraft. our engineers realized they can try and make a compact motor. today it would in a twenty inch wheel. we can fit an electric engine bus that it's unique to each t.v. gets in the fridge during acceleration can increase power up to fifty kilowatts that

is going to be deceptive according to tampa engineers that's a one and a half times more than any other similar in wheel mode on the market the secret to this lies in two sets of opposing magnets that was around a stationary coil which offers more pushing power than the traditional set up of one electromagnetic field and so when you combine all four wheel motors in addition to the direct application of power you get a fully electric vehicle with plenty of get up and go but like with all green machines the proof of the pudding is really in the battery. here tim squeezes the same performance from a smaller power pack by using what's called a super capacitor it more efficiently stores and releases energy and since batteries make up around seventy percent of an electric vehicles cost any reduction here is good news for all. there is one condition which we need to have good roads . because the wait is greater than regular bush term.

the reason these individual motors can expect to find increasing use in things like smaller carts they're lighter weight and lower speeds mean the extra heft in the wheels isn't as much of a problem this specially designed cart was used at last year's big air show in moscow and as technology continues to advance electric vehicles become more common citing yeah but was this issue a show here is similar to that of mobile telephones if you look at forecasts about the twenty first century from the end of the 1980's leading on lists for mobile phones will play a major role in the future of technology. what's happening today everybody has a cell phone so we can expect the same for transports thoughts for them. however at the moment a green machine that can truly compete with traditional ones in terms of range and cost is still mostly a dream of concept car designers but with the worldwide effort including the innovations you see today the moment that becomes a reality might be closer than we all expect at the very least having more options

from getting from point a to point b. can never be considered a bad thing. but whether it's chips train plane force or horsepower it's still your choice to make so it's all next time enjoy the ride which ever type of transit you choose. to do. there hasn't been anything on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. the source material is what helps keep journalism we. we want to present. something else.