Shennanigans on Time Magizine!

A little preface for this post: I am deviating from writing about what is going on with Bethany and me because I feel that as an engineer, I am obligated to call out Time on a bit of second rate technical reporting.

I am declaring Shennanigans on Time Magazine over their 2008 Best Inventions of the Year article. (pg 71, Nov. 10 2008) Out of the 50 inventions that they listed this year, including such things as the retail genome test, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Large Hadron Collider, I take issue with their article on the Tesla Roadster for the #2 spot.

My beef two points. Primarily, while I concede that the Tesla Roadster may have deserved a place on the list, it certainly did not deserve the full page attention it got in the #2 slot. Time claims that the $100,000 Roadster has made electric cars "sexy" and "excited the clean tech crowd since it was announced in 2003." This may be, but I contend that a top 10 invention should have some significant impact on life. Will the roadster have much of an impact? No! While the car may look cool, it is by no means the first electric car to be brought to market, nor is it the only one currently on the market. What Tesla has done is put together existing technologies into an attractive package, and bring it to market, but the price tag is so high that the average consumer could never dream of owning one, and it is more of a novelty than a practical invention. More affordable plug in hybrids, such as the Chevy Volt have a better chance of relieving our dependence on oil, and reducing our overall carbon emissions. The fact is that despite the glossy magazine articles, the 100k price tag, and limited production make it just another accessory for celebrities who want to show their green side. A better choice for the #2 slot would have been the thin film solar panels (#25) which are finally approaching cost parity with conventional electricity generation, a milestone which could change the entire paradigm of solar energy.

My second issue with the article is with their proof reading. The roadster runs on lithium ion batteries. But caption "C" above the full page picture reads "The inverter converts the AC energy from the battery into DC for the motor" ...right... I realize that this was just a typo (batteries make DC, and inverters turn that into AC) but this was the second page of the article, the #2 slot! An invention worthy of a full magazine page, and they couldn't be bothered to have someone technical read this over before sending it to print?

Well that is the end of my rant for tonight. I just cannot stand by and let shoddy work slip unnoticed in a national magazine like this.