Martin Eberhard

Martin Eberhard (born ) is an American inventor, engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded Tesla, Inc. (then Tesla Motors) with Marc Tarpenning in 2003. Eberhard served as Tesla's original chairman, and its CEO until late 2007. In 2015, he was inducted into the University of Illinois Engineering Hall of Fame. Early life and education Eberhard grew up in Kensington, California, a community in the Berkeley Hills. He received a B.S. in computer engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1982 and an M.S. in electrical engineering from the same school in 1984. Career Early career Eberhard began his career as an electrical engineer at Wyse Technology, where he designed the WY-30 ASCII computer terminal as his first product. Eberhard co-founded Network Computing Devices in 1987, where he served as chief engineer through its IPO on 1992.