Tesla’s shareholders have voted in favor of a compensation plan that could see CEO Elon Musk become the world’s first trillionaire. The potential incentives were laid out in September, and the company’s shareholders have agreed to allow this all-or-nothing package for its chief exec, who spent the first half of this year decimating the US federal government rather than working on any Tesla-adjacent projects.
The compensation plan lists several targets that the company must reach for Musk to reap the vast rewards. Tesla must reach a market value of $8.5 trillion, compared with its current worth of about $1.4 billion. Other requirements are metrics-based, such as selling a million robots with humanoid qualities, while others are strategic, such as establishing a succession plan for future Tesla leadership. Musk also has a lot of other irons in the fire across SpaceX and xAI, so the incentives may be an effort to keep the CEO focused on generating more money for this specific group of supporters.
Presently, most times the Tesla name makes headlines, it’s not for good press. The company coupled record-high revenue with tumbling profits in its Q3 2025 financial results. Just during October, it was the subject of multipleinvestigations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and incurred the wrath of the California Department of Insurance.
Tesla shareholders on Thursday approved a new pay package for CEO Elon Musk that is potentially worth up to $1 trillion over a decade, despite some prominent investors criticizing the size of the compensation plan.
The plan, one of the richest compensation packages in corporate history, would be delivered to Musk — the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $437 billion — if Tesla hits certain performance goals under his leadership. Meeting such targets would make him the world’s first trillionaire.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, which holds a stake in Tesla, on Tuesday said it would vote against the pay package, while investment advisory firms Glass Lewis and ISS also recommended shareholders vote against it.
The vote comes at a delicate time for Tesla, with the electric car maker’s sales tumbling earlier this year after Musk spearheaded the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. His role overseeing the layoffs of thousands of government workers antagonized some consumers, with Yale University researchers saying Muks’s actions reduced Tesla’s sales by as many as 1.2 million vehicles over the past three years.
Musk stepped back from DOGE in May, promising to refocus on Tesla.
One prominent Wall Street analyst, Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities, said the generous pay package is necessary to ensure Musk remains committed to Tesla.
“Tesla’s board members have asked shareholders to approve a long-term incentive package for Musk to retain and motivate the CEO to remain in his current leadership role with a new share package where he will only be paid if he attains ‘extraordinary financial returns,’” Ives said in a Nov. 5 research note.
The package requires Tesla to hit certain milestones, such as reaching a market cap of $8.5 trillion, or about six times its current valuation of $1.4 trillion, shipping 20 million vehicles and delivering 1 million of Tesla’s humanoid “Optimus” robots.
Despite Musk’s controversial leadership, the company’s sales and stock price have soared over the years. Since it went public in June 2010, the company’s stock has returned almost 35,000%, compared with a roughly 550% gain in the S&P 500 over the same time period.
On Thursday, Tesla shareholders approved an unprecedented $1 trillion pay package for CEO Elon Musk. The full compensation plan will go into effect by 2035—assuming Musk and the company successfully hit ambitious financial and production targets. If that happens, Musk will also get control of some 25 percent of the business, up from the 12 percent he controls currently. More than 75 percent of Tesla shareholders approved the move in a preliminary vote.
Musk celebrated the news onstage at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, appearing alongside two dancing humanoid robots, the company’s Optimus products. “Look at us, this is sick,” he said.
To meet its goals, however, Tesla will have to lead in industries well beyond electric cars—and guarantee that Optimus can do much more than dance. It will also have to beat all competitors in autonomous driving technology and robotics. “Tesla will have to be the market leader not just in the US but also Europe and other regions,” says Seth Goldstein, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, a financial services firm.
Specifically, Tesla needs to hit an$8.5 trillion valuation over the next 10 years, deliver 20 million vehicles to customers, send out 1 million robots, operate 1 million robotaxis, and sell 10 million subscriptions for its “Full Self-Driving” software over a three-month period—in addition to other financial targets.
Still, the vote marks a win for Musk, whose previous package, a $50 billion payday laid out in 2018, has been caught up in litigation after a shareholder alleged that the CEO had too much influence over the company’s board and that Tesla was therefore failing to uphold its legal obligations to shareholders. The lawsuit, brought in Delaware’s Chancery Court, led to Tesla reincorporating in Texas. A panel of judges heard the case on appeal in October; they’ll likely make a final decision in the coming months.
Before the vote, Tesla’s board argued the sky-high pay package was necessary to retain Musk as CEO—and keep him focused on the car company. In a call with investors last month, Musk suggested that he would have a hard time pushing Tesla ahead in robotics and autonomy if he didn’t have a strong sway over the automaker. “If we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over this robot army?” he asked. “I don’t feel comfortable building that robot army unless I have a strong influence.”
Following Thursday’s vote, Musk told investors gathered in Texas that production of the Cybercab, a self-driving vehicle that lacks a steering wheel or sideview mirrors, would begin in April. The company will need permission from the federal government to put the unconventionally designed car on the road.
FILE – Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk arrives on the red carpet for the Axel Springer media award in Berlin on Dec. 1, 2020. Musk says he plays on remaining as Twitter’s CEO until he can find someone willing to replace him in the job. Musk’s announcement came after millions of Twitter users asked him to step down in an unscientific poll the billionaire himself created and promised to abide by. (Hannibal Hanschke/Pool Photo via AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — The world’s richest man was just handed a chance to become history’s first trillionaire.
Elon Musk won a shareholder vote on Thursday that would give the Tesla CEO stock worth $1 trillion if he hits certain performance targets over the next decade. The vote followed weeks of debate over his management record at the electric car maker and whether anyone deserved such unprecedented pay, drawing heated commentary from small investors to giant pension funds and even the pope.
The vote is a resounding victory for Musk showing investors still have faith in him as Tesla struggles with plunging sales, market share and profits in no small part due to Musk himself. Car buyers fled the company this year as he has ventured into politics both in the U.S. and Europe and trafficked in conspiracy theories.
The vote came just three days after a report from Europe showing Tesla car sales plunged again last month, including a 50% collapse in Germany.
Still, many Tesla investors consider Musk as a sort of miracle man capable of stunning business feats, such as when he pulled Tesla from the brink of bankruptcy a half dozen years ago to turn it into one of the world’s most valuable companies.
The vote clears a path for Musk to become a trillionaire by granting him new shares, but it won’t be easy. The board of directors that designed the pay package require him to hit several ambitious financial and operational targets, including increasing the value of the company on the stock market nearly six times its current level.
It’s official: Elon Musk is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire.
Tesla shareholders approved a new executive pay package Thursday afternoon that would give Musk nearly $1 trillion in stock over the next decade, a record-shattering deal for the world’s richest man.
The total award depends on whether Musk can meet ambitious performance targets for the struggling electric-vehicle company, including growing Tesla’s market cap to $8.5 trillion—a more than 500% increase from today’s valuation. The goals also include delivery of 20 million Tesla vehicles and 1 million bots in addition to 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation.
“While we believe Elon is the only person capable of leading Tesla at this critical inflection point, changing the world is neither an overnight process nor the work of a single person,” Tesla’s Board wrote in a letter to shareholders in August. “So, we also want your help in securing the team and strategy needed to achieve goals that others will perceive as impossible but that we know are possible for Tesla.”
Musk’s net worth is estimated at about $473 billion.
Reining Musk back in
If all goes to plan, Musk’s stake in Tesla will rise from about 13% to nearly 29%—a level of control he’s long sought.
Having voting control in the “mid-20s” percent range would help secure a “strong influence,” but gives shareholders enough control to fire him if he goes “insane,” Musk said during Tesla’s earnings call last month.
“It’s called compensation, but it’s not like I’m going to go spend the money,” Musk added. “It’s just, if we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army, not current control, but a strong influence? That’s what it comes down to in a nutshell. I don’t feel comfortable wielding that robot army if I don’t have at least a strong influence.”
Tesla’s stock fell as much as 43% between January and March as Musk devoted much of his time to leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Since stepping back, shares have recovered to being up 16% year-to-date.
Many shareholders hope the new incentives will keep Musk focused on Tesla.
Ron Baron, the founder and CEO of Baron Capital, which holds a 0.39% stake in Tesla, said in a post on X that he supported the plan because without Musk, Tesla wouldn’t exist.
“Elon is the ultimate ‘key man’ of key man risk,” Baron wrote. “Without his relentless drive and uncompromising standards, there would be no Tesla.”
From Pope Leo to Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, Musk’s pay package had its haters
Not every Tesla investor was on board with the extravagant deal.
Glass Lewis and ISS, two proxy advisory services, urged Tesla shareholders to vote against the proposal, with the latter group citing “unmitigated concerns” with its magnitude and design. Musk then fired back during Tesla’s October earnings call, calling them “corporate terrorists.”
Meanwhile, Norges Bank Investment Management, the group behind Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund which holds a 1.14% stake in Tesla, said it voted against the pay package.
“While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk — consistent with our views on executive compensation,” the group said in a statement this week.
Pope Leo XIV, though not a Tesla investor, also recently expressed his concern for the message sent by Musk becoming a trillionaire—and the growing divide between the rich and the poor.
“CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving, the last figure I saw, it’s 600 times more than what average workers are receiving,” the pontiff told Catholic news site Crux in an interview released in September.
“Yesterday, the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world: What does that mean and what’s that about? If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble.”
A recent report from Oxfam found that the 10 richest Americans—which include Musk as well as Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, Amazon cofounder Jeff Bezos, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—gained $69.8 billion over the past year. That’s 833,631 times more than what the typical American household takes home.
While Musk still trails John D. Rockefeller’s $630 billion inflation-adjusted fortune, hitting his new performance targets could make him the richest person in modern history.
On Thursday, Tesla shareholders approved CEO Elon Musk’s pay package worth as much as $878 billion, an outcome that was widely expected. Musk received 75% approval in the vote. The compensation plan will hand over that wealth in 12 tranches of stock, provided various milestones are hit over the next decade.
The vote occurred at Tesla’s annual shareholder’s meeting in Austin, Texas, and the first milestone that would unlock one of Musk’s 12 payments would be Tesla reaching a market cap of $2 trillion. The company’s market cap currently sits at $1.4 trillion.
Other metrics include delivering 20 million Tesla vehicles, as well as deploying 1 million robotaxis and 1 million humanoid robots. Musk currently holds about 13% of Tesla shares and, if all of the milestones are hit, he would increase his stake to about 25%, according to CNBC.
There’s a broad consensus that Musk’s association with far-right politics in 2024 and 2025 has harmed Tesla’s brand among the company’s more liberal customer base, but shareholders are still convinced that the electric carmaker would be much worse off if he wasn’t around.
Musk had threatened to turn his attention elsewhere if he didn’t get his payday, but he’s already distracted by ostensibly running many other companies, including SpaceX, The Boring Company, xAI, and X. Officially, X doesn’t have a CEO right now, but Musk is largely seen as the one in charge and there doesn’t appear to be any real urgency to find a new head to replace Linda Yaccarino, who left in the summer.
Musk hitched his wagon to President Donald Trump, spending nearly $300 million to get him elected in 2024. Musk was the head of DOGE and took a chainsaw to the federal government, while also throwing up Nazi-style salutes. As a result, many potential Tesla customers were turned off and started placing bumper stickers on their cars like “I bought this before Elon went crazy.” Tesla has seen steep declines in sales across most of Europe, with sales in Norway down 50%, sales in the Netherlands down 48%, and sales in Spain down 30%, according to Bloomberg.
Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, insisted in the lead up to the vote that he deserved the pay package and it wasn’t actually about the money. The billionaire claimed that he needed the vote from shareholders to have influence over Tesla’s “robot army,” trying to suggest that his developments with the Optimus robot could be dangerous if they fall into the wrong hands. Musk has made similar claims about AI potentially destroying humanity if not guided correctly against what he calls the “woke mind virus.”
Musk has tried to pivot Tesla in recent years from an electric car company into something much harder to define. The billionaire CEO wants people to think of Tesla as a technology company, investing in AI and robotics, but Musk’s carnival barker attitude often means he promises big things and delivers something much more humble.
For example, Musk promised to build a mass transit system called the Loop in 2018 which initially included autonomous 16-passenger vehicles zipping around underground at speeds of 155 miles per hour. The concept video, which was originally posted to Vimeo before being deleted years later, was quite impressive.
But when it came time to actually build the thing Musk had promised, he created a short tunnel underneath Las Vegas. No special new vehicle, no high speed, no autonomy. It was just regular old Teslas slowly driven by humans in a short tunnel.
Musk loves to create hype when his companies are struggling. And then, when the sugar rush wears off, he moves on to the next thing. What’s the next over-hyped promise? Robots, for sure. But he’s also teasing the idea of a flying car, which he told podcaster Joe Rogan last week could be demonstrated before the end of this year.
Shareholders voted to give Musk a $56 billion pay package in 2018 that was also dependent on hitting 12 different milestones, including increased market capitalization of $50 billion up to $650 billion. But a judge in Delaware has shot down that compensation plan because it had misleading and incomplete information. That package is still being fought over in the courts. Musk said the judge was a “radical far left activist cosplaying as a judge,” an accusation he often makes of anyone to the left of Augusto Pinochet.
Elon Musk is worth $492 billion, according to the latest estimates by Forbes. Tesla’s stock closed down 3% to $445 per share on Thursday, but ticked up 3% in after hours trading after the announcement.
Tesla’s fading momentum may have less to do with its cars and more with its CEO’s politics. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
How did Tesla go from the world’s fastest-growing automaker to a company beleaguered by slowing sales and shrinking market share? According to a team of Yale researchers, the answer lies in the polarizing and partisan behavior of CEO Elon Musk.
Sure, Tesla has faced headwinds from aging models, rising competition, and a saturated customer base. But an analysis of county-level data shows that its declining demand is also linked to Musk’s increasingly political actions. The study’s authors estimate that Tesla would have sold between 1 million to 1.26 million more cars in recent years without what they call the “Musk partisan effect.”
During the most recent quarter, Tesla’s profit plunged 37 percent year-over-year. Revenue fell for two consecutive quarters this year. (The most recent quarter saw a rebound thanks to tax credits-fueled buying rush.)
The Yale researchers argue that much of Tesla’s decline stems from the alienation of its traditional consumer base. Drawing on vehicle registration data from S&P Global and county-level voting records, they found that Tesla’s customer base has long leaned Democratic and environmentally conscious.
That began to change in 2022, when Musk acquired X and rolled back content moderation policies. The shift deepened amid his involvement in the 2024 U.S. presidential election and his subsequent appointment as head of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). “Musk’s actions antagonized his most loyal customer base,” the authors wrote.
The trend has only grown more pronounced. Between October 2022 and April 2025, Musk’s partisan behavior caused Tesla to lose between 67 percent and 83 percent of its potential car sales, according to the study. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, that figure jumped to 150 percent.
Musk himself has acknowledged the backlash. During an April earnings call, he said his DOGE role had led to “blowback” and announced plans to scale back his time with the agency to refocus on Tesla.
The fallout hasn’t even benefited Tesla’s competitors. The study found that, absent Musk’s partisan behavior, sales of other EV and hybrid models would have been 17 to 22 percent lower over the past three years and 25 percent lower in early 2025, suggesting his actions helped rival automakers.
Musk’s controversies have also had unintended policy consequences, the researchers noted. In California, which aims for zero-emission vehicles to make up 25 percent of new sales by 2026, 68 percent by 2030, and 100 percent by 2035, progress has stalled. The study estimates that without Musk’s partisan impact, California would have added 139,700 more EV sales in the first quarter of 2025. The reality is that California fell short by 28,000 vehicles in that quarter to stay on track.
This study highlights just how impactful a CEO’s partisan actions can be,” the authors concluded.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, one of Tesla’s biggest investors, said Tuesday that it will vote against a proposed compensation package that could pay CEO Elon Musk as much as $1 trillion over a decade.
There will be more than a dozen company proposals up for a vote Thursday during Tesla’s annual meeting, but none have generated more division than Musk’s potentially massive pay package.
“While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk consistent with our views on executive compensation,” said Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the country’s Government Pension Fund Global. “We will continue to seek constructive dialogue with Tesla on this and other topics.”
The fund has a 1.16% stake, the sixth largest holding among institutional investors.
AP AUDIO: Big Tesla investor will vote against Musk’s massive pay package
A proposed compensation package is getting a lot of attention ahead of Tesla’s annual meeting. AP correspondent Mike Hempen reports.
Baron Capital Management, which holds about 0.4% of Tesla’s outstanding shares said Monday that it will vote in favor of the compensation package.
“Elon is the ultimate “key man” of key man risk. Without his relentless drive and uncompromising standards, there would be no Tesla,” wrote founder Ron Baron. “He has built one of the most important companies in the world. He’s redefining transportation, energy and humanoid robotics and creating lasting value for shareholders while doing it. His interests are completely aligned with investors.”
Musk is the company’s largest investor, holding 15.79% of all outstanding shares.
Tesla management has proposed a compensation arrangement that would hand Musk shares worth as much as 12% of the company in a dozen separate packages if the company meets ambitious performance targets, including massive increases in car production, share price and operating profit.
Tesla shareholders are voting this week on whether to award CEO Elon Musk a new pay package potentially worth up to $1 trillion over a decade, with some prominent investors in the electric car maker criticizing the compensation plan.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, which holds a stake in Tesla, on Tuesday said it would vote against the pay package.
“While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution and lack of mitigation of key person risk consistent with our views on executive compensation,” said Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the country’s government pension fund.
The fund has a 1.16% stake in Tesla, the sixth-largest holding among institutional investors.
Another investor, Baron Capital Management, said Monday that it would vote in favor of the package.
Musk “has built one of the most important companies in the world,” wrote Ron Baron, founder of the asset management firm. “He’s redefining transportation, energy and humanoid robotics and creating lasting value for shareholders while doing it. His interests are completely aligned with investors.”
Musk is the world’s richest person, with Bloomberg estimating his wealth at $477 billion.
Tesla’s board of directors introduced the proposed pay package in early September. Musk, who controls nearly 16% of Tesla’s outstanding shares, would also receive more voting power under the plan. In a Sept. 5 regulatory filing, the board described the proposed compensation package as an “ambitious plan to retain and incentivize Mr. Musk through the issuance of a highly customized, performance-based restricted stock award.”
Tesla would be required to hit certain financial and operational milestones for Musk to earn the full pay package. Those include the company reaching a market capitalization of at least $8.5 trillion; delivering 20 million vehicles; producing 1 million self-driving “robotaxis”; and manufacturing 1 million of the company’s humanoid robots, dubbed Optimus, which are currently under development.
Robyn Denholm, chairperson of the Tesla board, warned investors last week that Musk could leave the company if shareholders reject the enhanced pay proposal.
“If we fail to foster an environment that motivates Elon to achieve great things through an equitable pay-for-performance plan, we run the risk that he gives up his executive position, and Tesla may lose his time, talent and vision, which have been essential to delivering extraordinary shareholder returns,” Denholm wrote in a letter to shareholders posted on social media.
Billionaire oligarch Elon Musk appeared on the latest episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast on Friday. And while much of the conversation covered topics we’ve heard before, Musk decided to drop some news about something he wants to demo by the end of the year: a flying car.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before—from Musk himself, no less, who has been talking about making a flying car since at least 2014.
Musk’s flying car dreams came up in the context of Tesla’s Roadster, a car that was originally produced from 2008 to 2012. The second-generation Roadster has been promised by Musk for years, but he’s always failed to deliver since the original target date of 2020. When Rogan asked the Tesla CEO about the Roadster’s status, Musk slowly made it clear that he wants it to fly. But it took him some time during the conversation to actually reveal what he was talking about.
“We’re getting close to….” Musk said with a long pause, “…demonstrating the prototype. One thing I can guarantee is that this product demo will be unforgettable. Unforgettable.”
Rogan didn’t quite understand because Musk hadn’t revealed that he was referring to a flying car. The podcaster asked him how it would be unforgettable. Musk replied with a laugh, “Whether it’s good or bad, it will be unforgettable.” Rogan was still confused, asking Musk to explain.
“Well, you know, my friend Peter Thiel, once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars,” said Musk, finally giving a hint.
Thiel, the cofounder of Palantir and Musk’s old friend from his days at PayPal, is another far-right billionaire who spends his days talking about the Antichrist in the most sweaty manner possible. Rogan couldn’t quite understand what Musk was saying and pressed him further, to which Musk replied, “I mean, I think if Peter wants a flying car, we should be able to buy one.”
Rogan asked Musk if the vehicle would have a “retractable wing,” imploring him to elaborate further. Musk replied that he “can’t do the unveil before the unveil,” but said that he thinks, “it has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever.” The billionaire said he hoped to unveil it “before the end of the year,” putting an emphasis on hopefully.
None of this should be a surprise for anyone who’s followed Musk over the past decade. He often likes to roll out prototypes and ideas long before they’re ready to deliver. That doesn’t mean you’ll actually see those things in the form they were promised.
Remember Musk’s idea for the Hyperloop? Or the more modest Loop system, which was supposed to be a 155-mile-per-hour autonomous mass transit system? It was going to be able to carry 16 people at a time, zipping around in tunnels underneath cities. When it came time for Musk to deliver, he built a tunnel in Las Vegas where human drivers ferry around people in regular Tesla vehicles at slow speeds.
Which is to say that Musk might very well hold a demo of a flying car soon, though a prototype isn’t the same thing as a product that hits the market. Musk also unveiled an autonomous two-seater Cybercab over a year ago, and there are no indications that it will be released anytime soon. The Robotaxis, on the other hand (regular Tesla vehicles that drive “autonomously” with a safety driver in the passenger seat), are already shuttling people around in Texas.
There’s also the issue that confronts every flying car inventor of the past century: Since flying is much more difficult and dangerous than driving, how large is the market for something like this? Any aircraft that carries passengers in the U.S. needs to be flown by someone with a pilot’s license. Unless, of course, it’s an autonomous flying vehicle. And that presents its own logistical challenges, such as coordinating air traffic.
The full episode, which is available on YouTube, includes the broader conversation, but Musk definitely hedged on the timing of his flying Roadster while talking with Rogan.
“You know, we need to make sure that it works,” said Musk. “Like this is some crazy, crazy technology we got in this car. Crazy… technology. Crazy crazy.”
Rogan asked him if it was different than what was previously announced for the Roadster, which Musk confirmed.
“It has crazy technology. Like, is it even a car? I’m not sure. It looks like a car,” said Musk. “Let’s just put it this way. It’s crazier than anything James Bond… if you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it’s crazier than that.”
It’s interesting that Musk is giving hints that it might not be a “car.” It’s entirely possible that this means he’s developing a vertical take-off and landing vehicle (VTOL), which typically doesn’t drive on the road, but can still shuttle passengers. Many VTOL promises of the past decade have grabbed headlines as “flying cars,” even though they don’t actually drive on the road at all and function much more like helicopters.
Rogan was stunned, saying that he didn’t know what to think because he was only getting a “limited amount of information.” Musk, clearly sensing skepticism, told Rogan that if he wanted to see it before the unveiling, he would show it to him.
Are we going to see a flying car soon? It sounds like it. But we’ve had functioning flying cars since at least the 1950s. Are we going to see something that will be more than just a flashy distraction from the fact that Tesla vehicle sales are in the toilet ever since Musk aligned himself with President Donald Trump and made those two Nazi-style salutes? That part remains to be seen.
Tesla is an impressive company by many metrics but one place where it has noticeably struggled is glue. Specifically the glue the EV company has been using to stitch together its beleaguered monstrosity the Cybertruck. Earlier this year, Wired reported that nearly all of the Cybertrucks on the market had been recalled because Tesla used the “wrong glue” to attach the stainless steel panels the car is known for. As a result, the panels were at risk of falling off mid-ride.
Now, the company appears to have yet another adhesive-related problem on its hands. A regulatory filing made by Tesla this week shows the company is recalling another 6,197 Cybertrucks because yet another piece of its overpriced car is at risk of falling off onto the road. “On affected vehicles, the service-installed optional off-road light bar accessory may have been inadvertently attached to the windshield using the incorrect surface primer,” the filing states. The filing was originally reported by Business Insider.
The document goes on to note that the improperly glued light-bar might, in certain circumstances, be hazardous to other drivers on the road: “If the service installed optional off-road light bar accessory separates while the vehicle is in drive, it could create a road hazard for following motorists and increase their risk of a collision,” the filing states.
Nobody wants to be hit by a flying light bar, so the fix is obviously much appreciated. It sounds, again, like Tesla used the wrong glue to attach the fixture: “The remedy component is attached with a bracket anchored to the vehicle structure and, if necessary, an adhesive tape, whereas the recalled component was installed using a potentially incorrect adhesive primer,” the filing states.
Tesla has said that, as of this month, it had only “identified 619 warranty claims and 1 field report that may be related to the condition.” The company added that it was not aware of “any collisions, fatalities, or injuries that are or may be related to the condition.”
The Cybertruck has been broadly derided as an ugly failure. Originally, Tesla is said to have planned for a production capacity of 250,000 trucks per year, but sold a little less than 40,000 units last year, according to estimates from Cox Automotive. Since then, sales haven’t picked up much and, earlier this year, the U.S. Air Force finally found a good use for the vehicle: target practice.
People claim Elon Musk is a genius and Musk, himself, has often cultivated this image by claiming he wants to do many impressive and Herculean things—stuff like “colonize Mars,” make humanity a “multiplanetary species,” and save the world from a slew of perceived threats (the “woke mind virus,” etc.). However, before Musk becomes the messianic technocratic leader he dreams of being, he is going to have to first master that oldest of rudimentary technologies: the goop that holds stuff together.
Elon Musk is widely recognized as an electric car pioneer. Yet the Tesla CEO has also single-handedly chilled the automaker’s sales, according to a recent study by researchers at Yale University.
Public controversy over Musk’s role as leader of the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), as well as his acquisition of social media platform Twitter (now known as X) in 2022, reduced Tesla’s sales by up to 1.2 million vehicles over a three-year period, the researchers estimated in a working paper published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research that aimed to measure the effect of Musk’s politics on Tesla’s business.
“This study highlights just how impactful a CEO’s partisan actions can be,” the researchers wrote. “We show that Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and CEO of the most valuable automaker by market capitalization, had a dramatic effect on Tesla sales due to his politically partisan activities unrelated to Tesla’s core business.”
Musk’s adverse impact on Tesla’s business became visible starting in mid-2022, with sales especially dropping in Democratic-leaning states and counties, the study further concludes.
“Musk’s actions antagonized his most loyal customer base, for, as we show, Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to purchase a Tesla,” the researchers said.
The study’s lead author is energy and environmental economist Kenneth Gillingham, who is the senior associate dean of academic affairs at the Yale School of the Environment. His research focuses on consumer behavior and policy in the transportation and energy sectors.
Musk announced in May that he was pulling back from DOGE, which the Trump administration formed to shrink the federal government and cut spending.
Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment on the paper’s findings.
Musk’s foray into politics and emergence as a prominent adviser to President Trump early in his second term raised the entrepreneur’s visibility but alienated some potential Tesla customers, Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist at Jonestrading, previously told CBS News.
Tesla last week reported third-quarter earnings of $1.4 billion, down 37% from the year-ago period, citing higher costs and tariff-related headwinds. Tesla’s vehicle sales fell 1% in 2024 despite a 7% increase in EV sales across the car industry.
Tesla’s stock fell 27% in February, a period of time that coincided with Mr. Trump’s first full month in the White House. But the shares have rebounded and are now up roughly 14% on the year, with investors betting on growth in the company’s fledgling robotaxi business, autonomous driving technology and plans to build AI-powered humanoid robots.
“We estimate the AI and autonomous opportunity is worth at least $1 trillion alone for Tesla,”Wedbush Securities technology analyst Dan Ives said in a recent report, adding that he expects the Trump administration to fast-track such initiatives.
Another measure of Musk’s perceived value to Tesla is the enormous pay package shareholders are preparing to vote on for the executive. That total package could be worth up to $1 trillion in a decade, one of the richest compensation packages in corporate history.
For Musk to earn the full amount, Tesla would have to hit certain profitability and production targets, as well as reach a market cap of $8.5 trillion — nearly six times its current value — in 10 years.
Robyn Denholm, chairman of Tesla’s board of directors, is urging shareholders to approve Musk’s proposed compensation. “Without Elon, Tesla could lose significant value, as our company may no longer be valued for what we aim to become: a transformative force reimagining the fundamental building blocks of mobility, energy and labor,” Denholm said in the letter.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s recent politics have cost the company millions of car sales, according to an October report published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
If not for the “Musk partisan effect,” as it is referred to by researchers, Tesla would have sold an additional 1 to 1.26 million vehicles in the U.S. from October 2022 to April 2025. That translates to tens of billions in revenue that never came in. In fact, moving those additional cars would have boosted the company’s sales by a massive 67 to 83 percent—and California likely would have reached its 2026 target of 35 percent zero-emission vehicles market share.
The political activity at hand refers to Musk’s donating around $300 million to Republican candidates, leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Trump, and his handling of X.
The report tracks Tesla’s sales before and after Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in October 2022. Pre-acquisition, Democrat-heavy counties preferred Teslas more often than Republican counties. Afterwards, however, there was a noticeable shift away from Tesla purchases in those Democratic counties.
An Inc.com Featured Presentation
As per the study, Musk’s behavior “antagonized his most loyal customer base,” as it’s more often left-leaning buyers interested in EV. Those buyers haven’t stopped purchasing completely. Rather, the report recorded a boost of around 17 to 22 percent in sales of competitors’ electric and hybrid vehicles.
On the flip side, Republicans don’t seem more interested in Tesla. According to a survey cited in the NBER report, “Musk’s public persona over the last two years has significantly reduced liberal and Democratic support for Tesla without increasing conservative and Republican support.”
The data proves Tesla is no longer just a car company, but a political statement. And it’s because of Musk’s public involvement in politics. It’s a rising trend in top companies, like Spotify losing artists due to the CEO’s support for AI military company Helsing, and the Starbucks boycott related to the company’s stance in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
What’s left to watch is Tesla’s future sales, especially as it continues to roll out its robottaxi service across the US.
Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of Waymo, speaks onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 on Oct. 27, 2025 in San Francisco. Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch
Waymo, the self-driving company owned by Alphabet, is soon hitting the highways. Operating on highways is just one part of a rapid expansion plan that includes moving to six U.S. cities, entering international markets and launching service at airports—all while maintaining a focus on safety above all else.
“It is imperative that we scale,” said Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of Waymo, while speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 today (Oct. 27). Mawakana said Waymo plans to increase its weekly autonomous rides from the “hundreds of thousands” to one million by the end of 2026. The company already operates in Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta and Austin, but hopes to more than double its footprint by expanding into Miami, Dallas, Denver, Seattle, Nashville and Washington, D.C.
Waymo will begin operations in Miami early next year, Mawakana said. Timelines for other cities will depend on local regulatory readiness. In some markets, Waymo will “just show up and they’ll launch,” she said. Others, like Washington D.C., will require more groundwork before fully autonomous rides can roll out.
The company is also setting its sights overseas. Last year, Waymo announced plans to test operations in Tokyo through partnerships with taxi firms GO and Nihon Kotsu, using human-driven cars to train its technology in the city’s dense urban environment. London is next: the company revealed earlier this month that it will begin offering fully autonomous rides there in 2026.
Waymo’s expansion isn’t limited to geography—it’s moving onto new types of roads. Until now, its vehicles have been restricted mostly to surface streets. But the company has begun highway testing through employee trials in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco. “We think it’s really important to conceptualize the ways in which that experience is different than surface streets,” said Mawakana, adding that highway rides will open to the public by year’s end.
The move to highways will also make it easier for Waymo to facilitate airport trips—a category that the company is “super focused” on, according to Mawakana. Waymo has already secured permits to operate at airports in San Francisco and San Jose and hopes to add more as its vehicles become a more common sight on highways.
Unlocking more roads raises the stakes for safety. Waymo, which publishes its safety data online, reports that its vehicles are involved in 91 percent fewer high-severity crashes, 78 percent fewer airbag-deployment crashes and 80 percent fewer injury-causing crashes compared to human drivers. If that record began to slip, Mawakana said the company would “absolutely” slow its expansion. “That’s what it means to be a safety-first culture.”
Part of that culture, she added, is being transparent about the limits of the technology. “I’m not telling you 100 percent across the board, and that’s really important,” said Mawakana. “We have to be in this open and honest dialogue about the fact that we know it’s not perfection.”
Tesla is making headlines again with the return of its Mad Max mode in Full Self-Driving (Supervised). This feature, designed to make the car drive more aggressively, has arrived just as the automaker faces new scrutiny from regulators and ongoing lawsuits from customers.
Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide – free when you join my CyberGuy.com newsletter.
Mad Max Mode returns in Tesla’s latest FSD update
Tesla recently launched its FSD v14.1.2 update. The update follows last year’s major FSD v14 release, which introduced “Sloth Mode” for slower, more cautious driving. The latest update moves to the opposite end of the spectrum with Mad Max mode.
According to Tesla’s release notes, this profile allows higher speeds and more frequent lane changes than Hurry mode. The update has sparked mixed reactions. Some Tesla fans praise it for making driving feel more natural. Critics argue that it invites risky behavior at a time when regulators like the NHTSA and California DMV are already investigating Tesla’s advanced driver-assist systems.
A new Mad Max speed profile is now included in Tesla’s Full Self-Driving interface.(Tesla)
History of Tesla’s Mad Max mode since 2018
The Mad Max setting isn’t new. Tesla first introduced it in 2018 for the original Autopilot system. At the time, Elon Musk described it as ideal for handling aggressive city traffic. The name, borrowed from the post-apocalyptic movie series, immediately drew attention for its bold tone.
Now, the feature is back in Tesla’s latest FSD version. Within hours of release, drivers reported seeing cars equipped with Mad Max mode rolling stop signs and driving over the speed limit. These early reports highlight how the mode may behave more assertively than before.
Why Tesla brought back its Mad Max mode
Bringing back Mad Max mode may serve several purposes for Tesla. It helps demonstrate the company’s continuous development of FSD software while appealing to drivers who prefer faster, more decisive movement in traffic. It also acts as a signal that Tesla is still chasing the goal of Level 4 autonomy, even though its system remains classified as Level 2, requiring constant driver supervision.
Tesla owners can access Mad Max mode through the car’s settings under Speed Profiles. (Chesnot/Getty Images)
For Tesla, this feature shows confidence in its progress. For observers, it raises concerns about timing. With multiple investigations and lawsuits in progress, many expected Tesla to focus on safety rather than on more aggressive driving profiles.
What this means for you
If you own a Tesla with Full Self-Driving (Supervised), you can access Mad Max mode through the car’s settings under Speed Profiles. This mode provides a more assertive driving experience that includes quicker acceleration, more lane changes, and less hesitation.
However, remember that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system still requires active driver attention. You must keep your hands on the wheel and remain ready to take control at any moment. While the name suggests thrill and speed, safety and awareness should remain your top priority.
Tesla’s speed-profile menu includes the toggle options of Chill, Standard, Hurry, and Mad Max profiles to customize how aggressively their car responds in traffic. (REUTERS/Mike Blake)
If you share the road with Teslas, it’s smart to stay alert. Vehicles using Mad Max mode may accelerate or change lanes more quickly than expected. Giving Teslas a little extra space can help reduce surprises and keep everyone safer on the road.
Take my quiz: How safe is your online security?
Think your devices and data are truly protected? Take this quick quiz to see where your digital habits stand. From passwords to Wi-Fi settings, you’ll get a personalized breakdown of what you’re doing right and what needs improvement. Take my Quiz here: CyberGuy.com.
Tesla’s decision to reintroduce Mad Max mode is both strategic and provocative. It revives a feature from its early Autopilot days while reigniting debate over the balance between innovation and responsibility. The mode’s return reminds everyone that Tesla continues to test the limits of driver-assist technology and public tolerance for it.
Will Tesla’s revived Mad Max mode mark a bold step toward autonomy or a dangerous gamble in the race for self-driving dominance? Let us know by writing to us at CyberGuy.com
Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide – free when you join my CyberGuy.com newsletter.
Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.
“NHTSA is in contact with the manufacturer to gather additional information,” the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) told Reuters. “The human behind the wheel is fully responsible for driving the vehicle and complying with all traffic safety laws.”
When it opened a fresh probe into FSD earlier this month, the NHTSA said the tech had “induced vehicle behavior that violated traffic safety laws.” Some Tesla vehicles with FSD engaged are said to have run red lights and driven against the flow of traffic.
Tesla initially offered a Mad Max mode in 2018, before FSD was available. The company revived Mad Max this month and it didn’t take long before there were reports of Tesla vehicles that were using the mode rolling stop signs and driving above speed limits.
Earlier this year, when Tesla CEO Elon Musk was at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump administration initiative reportedly culled NHTSA staff. As part of that, DOGE was said to have fired three people who were part of a small team that worked on autonomous vehicle safety.
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!
I am sure you are waiting to learn the results of last week’s poll. (Reminder: Sign up for the Mobility newsletter to participate in our polls!) Here is what I asked: “What is the best business model for autonomous vehicle tech? (Keep profitability in mind.)”
Far and away, readers think longer-haul delivery is the best bet, with 40% picking this option. Robotaxis came in next with 25.5% of the vote, followed by licensing tech to automakers at 19.1% and last-mile delivery with 14.9%. One reader emailed to point out that I didn’t include warehouse applications like autonomous forklifts. The longer-haul delivery category can be broken down further, though, and is worth another poll, which we included in this week’s newsletter.
In the long list of arguments one might make to justify a $1 trillion compensation package, having control over a robot army was certainly not on my mind. And yet, this is the argument Elon Musk made during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call.
Here’s the rundown: On November 6, shareholders will vote whether to approve a board-endorsed compensation package that would grant Musk up to 12% of Tesla’s stock. If the company hits its target market value of $8.6 trillion, that package would be worth about $1 trillion.
The board and Musk have spent weeks lobbying shareholders to approve the measure, even as proxy advisers Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis have recommended that investors reject it. Musk is now in attack mode, which was on display at the end of the earnings call when he called the firms corporate terrorists and made his final pitch. His robot army argument centers on power and control, not so much money. Although, hey, money can provide both.
“My biggest concern line: If we build this robot army, do I have a strong influence over that robot army? I don’t feel comfortable building a robot army if I don’t have a strong influence,” Musk said during the earnings call. He was referring to Tesla’s Optimus robot program and used it as an example of products he wants full control over.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025
That argument will hardly persuade Musk’s critics, particularly in the wake of his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency. But Musk doesn’t need to convince his growing list of critics, unless, of course, they own Tesla shares.
A little bird
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
This week, General Motors dropped the ax on the BrightDrop electric van program after four short years. It was not the biggest surprise in the world; after all, hundreds of unsold vans have been sitting untouched in lots in Michigan and Canada for months now. (One little bird reached out to tell us that hundreds of them are in a lot in Flint, Michigan.) GM cited a slower-than-expected market for commercial electric vans, but it didn’t go into detail about why, exactly, BrightDrop failed so miserably.
Another little bird has given us a clue, though. The vans are pricey but well-liked and should save fleet owners money over time. And electric drivetrains are a great fit for last-mile delivery. What GM appears to have missed was the infrastructure piece, according to one insider. The company leaned hard on outside partnerships to build out so-called depot charging, instead of offering it as part of the fleet purchases. That turned a number of potential customers away and just generally caused headaches.
The big deal this week is about EVs and AI data centers. Yes, there is a connection.
Redwood Materialsraised $350 million in a Series E round led by venture firm Eclipse, and included a new strategic investment by Nvidia’s venture capital arm, NVentures. The company’s valuation was not disclosed, but a source familiar with the round told TechCrunch it was about $6 billion, a billion dollars higher than its previous valuation.
The chunk of this money is going toward Redwood’s new energy storage business, which is giving a new purpose to EV batteries it has collected and that have too much life left to put through the recycling process. The company ties these retired EV batteries to renewable energy sources like wind and solar, or the grid, to power AI data centers or industrial sites.
Other deals that got my attention this week …
Avride secured strategic investments and other commitments of up to $375 million, backed by Uber and Nebius. None of these companies gave me specifics when asked if this was all equity. One insider did say to pay attention to the “other commitments” bit, which suggests it was not a straight cash injection.
Spiro, the African electric motorbike startup headquartered in Dubai, raised $100 million in a round led by the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), the development arm of Afreximbank. This is the largest raise ever for African e-mobility.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
General Motors made several announcements at an event in NYC that were meant to show where it’s headed. And, yes, AI plays a central role. Before AI could take the stage, GM said it will overhaul the electrical and computational guts of its future vehicles. The company will roll out a new electric architecture and centralized computing platform in new vehicles, starting with the Cadillac Escalade IQ in 2028. That foundation will allow the company to deliver faster software; more capable automated driving features, including eyes-off driving; and a custom, conversational AI assistant.
Earnings season is upon us, and this quarter I am watching for data and executive commentary that helps me understand how tariffs and the expired EV tax credit are affecting the automotive sector. I don’t have any clear takeaways yet — and probably won’t until the next quarter.
Tariffs are hitting, Q3 reports from GM and Ford indicate. For instance, GM forecast that tariffs will reduce its 2025 profits by $2.3 billion and Ford said it would take a $2 billion bite out of the bottom line. But both of those projections are billions of dollars better than the automakers predicted earlier this year, and the automakers hope to offset those costs. CEOs from both automakers thanked President Trump for extending a relief measure from tariffs on automotive parts sourced from Canada and Mexico.
Some other GM and Ford news: Ford will continue to pause production of its F-150 Lightning trucks as it prioritizes gas and hybrid F-Series versions in a bid to recover from a fire at its primary aluminum supplier Nevolis. Meanwhile, GM CEO Mary Barra told the Verge’s Decoder podcast that the company will drop support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from all of its vehicles. Oh, and late-breaking: GM has laid off 200 salaried workers from its Warren Tech Center.
Tesladelivered a record number of vehicles in the third quarter of 2025, results buoyed by U.S. customers who took advantage of the expiring federal EV tax credit. That didn’t translate to greater earnings. Tesla’s third-quarter profit was $1.4 billion, 37% lower than it was in the same quarter last year.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administrationopened an investigation after seeing footage from early October of a Waymo autonomous vehicle maneuvering around a stopped school bus that was unloading kids in Atlanta.
Rivian is undergoing a bit of a shake-up that includes cutting 600 people from its workforce (its third round of layoffs this year), and its founder and CEO is taking on yet another position: chief marketing officer. Rivian also agreed this week to pay $250 million to settle a class-action shareholder lawsuit filed after the company suddenly hiked prices on its R1 pickup truck and SUV in 2022.
Meanwhile, I spent some time in the Bay Area with executives from Rivian’s micromobility spinout company Also. The company revealed three new products, and if Also president Chris Yu and Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe (and Also board member) are to be believed, there will be even more coming. For now, it’s a slick modular pedal-assist e-bike and two pedal-assist quad vehicles — the delivery van version that Amazon has already agreed to buy. The big compelling tech story here is vertical integration and software.
Here’s a viral TikTok video from last week of a man acting as if the cameras mounted on his Tesla allow him to see ghosts on his infotainment screen:
Happy Halloween to him, and to you. The video has been watched about 11 million times so far.
If you’re 17 and you want to scare your younger sibling this week by driving around a cemetery in your parents’ Tesla and pointing out the “ghosts” on the onscreen display, I cannot and would not stop you from doing that. I would caution you, however, that it doesn’t make sense, even according to spooky story logic. Reconstituted dead bodies? Ghouls? Skeletons? These makes sense in cemeteries. Ghosts, however, are the often vengeful spirits of the once living, and they dwell in important places from their lives, or the places where they died, such as houses, hospitals, or the sites of grisly car accidents, including… well, never mind.
Anyway, in 2021, a Tesla driver who had visited a cemetery pointed out online that the car’s non-LIDAR object detection system seemed to mistake a graveside vase full of flowers for a pedestrian. I say they pointed out the mistake when what I mean is the user posted a spooky video on TikTok and racked up 23 million views. That particular object detection system might have glitched out, but since Teslas stubbornly lack sensory equipment that can use lasers to form 3D images of their surroundings, mistaking inanimate objects for people is a very plausible error, if in fact that’s what it was.
“Collision Avoidance features cannot always detect all objects, vehicles, bikes, or pedestrians, and you may experience unnecessary, inaccurate, invalid, or missed warnings for many reasons,” the Tesla Model 3 owner’s manual says.
So the system was likely just being cautious with flawed data back in 2021. That’s a better kind of digital hallucination than the alternative: mistaking people for inanimate objects. But it’s still a false positive, which is a little troubling considering in 2021, around the time of the original “ghost” video, Tesla voluntarily recalled almost 12,000 cars because they had the potential to suddenly brake due to false positives in their object-detection system during assisted driving, or “Full Self-Driving Beta” as Tesla called it at the time.
The phenomenon came to be known by the seasonally appropriate term “phantom braking,” and was investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Users on the Tesla Motors Club message board claimed to have experienced phantom braking, including one who wrote “The car is frequently fooled by illusions of a threat that a human would ignore.” One example they described was the shadow of a bird flying over the road—perhaps a talking raven, but the user left out this detail.
More than four years later, the object detection system has changed. It no longer includes its ultrasonic sensors, for instance. The new system “gives Autopilot high-definition spatial positioning, longer range visibility and the ability to identify and differentiate between objects,” according to a page on the Tesla website last updated last month.
And along with those changes, we get a whole new kind of spine-tingling Tesla video. Instead of mixing up flowers and pedestrians during the day, the latest ghost-busting Tesla apparently mixes up headstones and pedestrians at night. The influencer who made the TikTok video, by the way, had attempted the same basic premise for a video earlier this Halloween season, but in the form of sponsored content advertising some Halloween decorations, which the Tesla also allegedly mistook for real people.
Gizmodo reached out to Tesla for any relevant information about changes and improvements in its object detection system, and will update if we hear back.
Tesla held its third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, and CEO Elon Musk seemed particularly focused on getting his $1 trillion payday. But before the world’s wealthiest man made the case for why he deserves to be the first trillionaire, he wanted to make sure you understand one thing: He’s going to help abolish poverty.
“We’re excited about the updated mission of Tesla, which is sustainable abundance,” Musk said on the call.
“So going beyond sustainable energy to, say, sustainable abundance is the mission, where we believe with Optimus and self-driving, that you can actually create a world where there is no poverty, where everyone has access to the finest medical care. Optimus will be an incredible surgeon, for example. And imagine if everyone had access to an incredible surgeon.”
To be clear, Optimus, Tesla’s robot, is nowhere near ready to be a “surgeon.” But Musk went on, tossing in a caveat about safety.
“So I think there’s… you know, of course, we make sure Optimus is safe and everything, but I do think we’re headed for a world of sustainable abundance. And I’m excited to work with the Tesla team to make that happen,” said Musk.
Musk’s utopian vision isn’t new
The billionaire has long teased the idea that the future will be filled with so many robots and so much automation that nobody will have to work. It’s an idea that was incredibly popular in the 20th century, not just in science fiction but among serious academics. Back in the 1960s, it was just taken as a given that people of the year 2000 would only work maybe 20 hours per week. And beyond that, by the mid-21st century, no one would have to work at all.
That vision for the future didn’t work out, of course. Granted, much of the U.S. workforce became George Jetson-style button pushers in the sense that we have a large information-based economy where many people sit at keyboards typing. But the ability to just sit at home and not work while robots do everything is still a fantasy. And it’s a fantasy because the problem isn’t technological, it’s political.
There is no way to ever deliver a leisure society where everyone gets paid to do nothing unless you create a political and economic system that delivers that. The “free market” will not just cause that to happen by magic. When Amazon uses robots to streamline its operations—replacing workers and sorting packages more efficiently—the online retailer doesn’t give the money it saves to workers. That money goes to shareholders. And it’s unclear how many people actually believe that Musk’s robots would somehow deliver what he dubs a “universal high income” in the future, above and beyond a universal basic income.
Musk doesn’t understand poverty
In reality, Musk does not give a fuck about poverty. To guys like Musk, people who are poor are just getting what they deserve. And all it takes is a quick search of his X account to see how often he says things to degrade homeless people.
“In most cases, the word ‘homeless’ is a lie,” Musk tweeted on Dec. 10, 2024. “It’s usually a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness.”
In most cases, the word “homeless” is a lie.
It’s usually a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness. https://t.co/Vwp8L7tNzd
You may notice that Musk’s tweet was sent a month following the 2024 presidential election, after Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris, but before Trump was sworn in for his second term on January 20.
Musk would soon join Trump’s government as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where he helped unlawfully abolish the foreign aid program USAID and ran riot through just about every federal agency, destroying programs he didn’t like and hoovering up personal data along the way. What gave him the legal authority to do that? Nothing. But Musk did it anyway with the blessing of President Trump, until the two men predictably had a falling out.
Who deserves a good life?
Musk believes that the U.S. is built on meritocracy, where people who have billions of dollars obviously deserve that money, and people who are poor deserve to stay poor. He demonstrated that time and again with DOGE, claiming that he was rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. The “fraud,” as he saw it, was people who were undeserving of the government benefits they received, whether it was food stamps or Social Security, a program he called a Ponzi scheme.
Remember when Musk went to CPAC in February and swung around a chainsaw, symbolic of the government programs he was going to cut? Those programs are what would be necessary to deliver money and services to people in order to make sure no one is poor. Why on Earth would anyone believe that he cares about poverty after such a ridiculously over-the-top display of his power?
Musk frequently insists that America’s homelessness problem is the fault of those on the streets.
“The vast majority of those on the streets are there due to severe drug addiction and/or mental illness,” Musk tweeted on Nov. 9, 2024. “The issue not that they got a little behind in their mortgage payments and would be back on their feet if someone just offered them a job.”
But Musk doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The billionaire quite literally doesn’t see the people who are struggling as he gets shuttled around the world. The majority of people who are homeless “have no mental health or substance use disorder,” according to the United States Interagency on Homelessness. Somewhere between 40-60% of people who lack homes also have a job.
As the agency explains on its website: “Today, only 37 affordable homes are available for every 100 extremely low-income renters. As a result, 70% of the lowest-wage households spend more than half theirincome on rent, placing them at high risk of homelessness when unexpected expenses (such as car repairs and medical bills) arise.”
Elon doesn’t believe in charity
Musk has repeatedly said that he doesn’t really believe in charity. The CEO insists that he’s doing enough good in the world through his private companies. When the head of the UN World Food Program noted in 2021 that Musk could end world hunger with just 2% of his wealth, Musk balked at the idea.
Instead of giving $6 billion to end hunger for 42 million people, as the UN had proposed, he gave $5.7 billion to an undisclosed charity. Forbes reports the most likely recipient was a donor-advised fund (DAF), which “behaves like a philanthropic bank account.” Forbes doesn’t even count DAF donations as charitable contributions when tracking billionaires because the money can just sit in the account indefinitely.
Forbes also notes that donating to a DAF gets Musk a huge tax break. So it seems pretty obvious what’s happened there. Musk’s private foundation hasn’t donated the legally required 5% of its assets for three years in a row, more evidence that any “giving” he does is mostly for tax reasons.
Musk’s promises about fixing poverty are PR
Investors vote on Musk’s $1 trillion pay package on Nov. 6, calling the people who oppose it “corporate terrorists” during his call on Wednesday. And he knows full well that he needs to pay lip service to those struggling financially right now, since he’s accumulating an obscene amount of wealth.
But Musk has to know that his utopian pitch for Optimus will not deliver a work-free society. And selling robots has nothing to do with creating that perfect world; it’s about making more money for him. Same as it ever was.
Elon Musk stole the show in the final minutes of Tesla’s Wednesday earnings call to label the advisory firms pushing shareholders to reject his $1 trillion pay package “corporate terrorists.”
After months of being relatively quiet following his resignation from the Department of Government Efficiency and subsequent fallout with President Donald Trump, Musk slammed proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis.
“I just don’t feel comfortable building a robot army here and then being ousted because of some asinine recommendations from ISS and Glass Lewis, who have no freaking clue,” Musk said. “I mean, those guys are corporate terrorists.”
Musk, in a separate X post on Wednesday, also called into question the role of proxy advisory firms generally. The Tesla CEO echoed criticism from ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood by saying these firms—which issue recommendations to shareholders for how they should vote on proposals at public companies’ annual shareholder meetings—have too much sway, especially with passive investors like index funds, which have substantial voting power because of the shares they hold for clients.
“ISS and Glass Lewis have no actual ownership themselves and often vote along random political lines unrelated to shareholder interests! This is a major problem that is not just limited to Tesla,” Musk wrote on X.
However, advisory firms do not vote directly in annual shareholder meetings and merely recommend positions that are also individually analyzed by some of the biggest institutional investors, including BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, which do their own in-house research. Both ISS and Glass Lewis twice recommended voters reject Musk’s previous 2018 pay package. Shareholders ultimately approved the package twice.
A spokesperson for Glass Lewis told Fortune in a statement its job is to provide analysis and recommendations to its clients.
“Those that are Tesla shareholders will ultimately make their own decisions about Mr. Musk’s pay proposal and the Board directors that put it forward for shareholder vote,” the statement read.
ISS declined to comment. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk, who has a net worth of $455 billion, said he needs an ownership stake “in the mid-20s approximately” to achieve his goals at Tesla. The pay package in question would give Musk about $1 trillion over 10 years if he meets performance metrics, one of which includes boosting the company’s market cap more than 500% to $8.5 trillion.
ISS and Glass Lewis both issued reports earlier this month questioning Musk’s pay package, in part because of the package’s size and because it would dilute existing shareholders’ holdings.
While Tesla claimed regular benchmarking doesn’t apply to Musk’s pay, because no other company has “remotely similar goals embodied in their compensation programs,” Glass Lewis wrote in its report that Musk’s 2025 performance award is “unprecedented” compared with that of other public companies, and around 33.5x larger than its predecessor from 2018.
“It is clear that the quantum, on a realizable and granted basis, outpaces all other pay packages.”
