Business

September 14, 2008

Top innovator to give lecture

Martin Eberhard, creator of the battery-powered Tesla roadster, will speak at Wilkes.

Martin Eberhard, founder and former CEO of Tesla Motors, an electric car company based in southern California, will present this year’s Allan P. Kirby Lecture at Wilkes University, “Building a Culture of Innovation: From E-books to Electric Cars to...?”

Eberhard, one of Fortune Magazine’s Top Innovators of the Year in 2007, re-invented the electric automobile with the introduction of the Tesla Roadster, a battery-powered supercar that reaches speeds of 130 miles per hour and gets more than 200 miles on a single charge.

Newsweek dubbed the Tesla Roadster an “electric dream,” and Wired Magazine named it the 2007 Car of the Year.

Prior to Tesla Motors, Eberhard, an electrical engineer who has spent his career in Silicon Valley, facilitated the sale of NuvoMedia, the company he started that invented the Rocket eBook, to Gemstar/TV Guide.

The Allan P. Kirby Lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place Oct. 1, at 7:30 p.m. in the Dorothy Dickson Darte Center for the Performing Arts, S. River and W. South Streets, Wilkes-Barre.

For more information, call Rebecca Van Jura at 408-4306 or e-mail Rebecca.Vanjura@wilkes. edu.

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