Wally Rippel, a long-time proponent of electric vehicles, will appear at 3 p.m. Wednesday, April 23 as the next speaker in the college’s Distinguished Lecturer Series. Rippel is an engineer and inventor who has been awarded 24 patents.

His career in electric propulsion began as a Caltech engineering student, when Rippel’s electric-powered Volkswagen Bus narrowly defeated an MIT vehicle in an historic 1968 cross-country race. He also worked at the jet Propulsion Laboratory on electric vehicle battery research and other projects. He was an engineer at AeroVironment where he helped develop General Motor’s EV1 and was featured in the 2006 documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? Rippel was also closely involved with the development of the Tesla Roadster, a fully electric sports car which entered commercial production last month.

He is now at AC Propulsion which he founded in 1992 with Alan Cocconi. He is currently writing a book on the issues of oil depletion and global warming titled “Making What's Left into What's Right.”