History
Eberhard grew up in Kensington, California, attending Kensington Hilltop Elementary School there. He attended junior high school and high school in adjacent El Cerrito until the middle of 11th grade, when his family moved to Elmhurst, Illinois. He graduated from York Community High School in 1978.
Eberhard received his undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering in 1982, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He subsequently earned his Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1983 from the same school.
Eberhard began his career as an electrical engineer at Wyse Technology, where he designed the WY-30 ASCII computer terminal as his first product.
Later, Eberhard co-founded and founded start-ups Network Computing Devices, Inc. (making X Window-based network terminals) and NuvoMedia (making the Rocket eBook), respectively.
Eberhard co-founded Tesla Motors in 2003, serving as CEO until 2007. On November 30, 2007 Tesla Motors released a press release titled "Martin Eberhard, Co-founder of Tesla Motors, to Transition to Advisory Board." According to the Tesla Motors Club forum and CNN Money, Martin was asked to leave, but the reason for his being asked is not publicly available.
On January 7, 2008, the New York times reported that Tesla Motors issued a statement on its web site explaining that the Silicon Valley electric-car start-up’s founder and former chief executive, Martin Eberhard, “has transitioned from the board of directors and executive management of the company to the advisory board.” On January 7, 2008 Martin confirmed that he was no longer employed in Tesla Motors and was only a shareholder in the company. He said he planned to start another company entirely in the green tech field.
Eberhard maintained a blog at teslafounders.com until a lawsuit with Tesla Motors was settled. The blog has been deleted.
On January 14, 2010 it was rumored that Martin was working for VW of America. On January 19, Martin Eberhard confirmed to Autoblog Green that he was doing work with Volkswagen but no further details have been provided.
Read more about this topic: Martin Eberhard
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