Tesla Proposes a Trillion-Dollar Bet That It’s More Than Just Cars

Tesla has launched a Robotaxi service limited to Austin, Texas, earlier this summer, but it is not clear if the vehicles that drive in the city are technologically advanced to count for this objective of 1 million Robotaxi. (The proposal specifies that Robotaxis should not have a “human driver” and that the vehicles in Texas have safety monitors seated in their front passenger seats for the city walks, and in the driver’s seats for highway trips.)

Meanwhile, the company would be well below its current objective of producing 5,000 Optimus units, its humanoid robot, at the end of this year, having produced only a few hundred. Musk said Optimus could one day revolutionize the world economy by replacing the majority of human work, but the information reported in July that the Optimus team had special problems with the robot’s hands. Vice-president of the company Optimus Robotics, a nine-year-old veteran from Tesla, left in June.

“For Musk to receive the complete remuneration package, Tesla must be the leader of autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots in a number of countries,” said Seth Goldstein, senior action analyst at Morningstar, a financial services company.

Musk’s past remuneration packages were not conventional and controversial. Unlike other CEOs, Musk does not receive annual remuneration or incentives, but is rather paid in accordance with Tesla’s long -term performance. Its 2018 remuneration package, worth more than $ 50 billion, is still in legal limbo after a legal action by shareholders accusing the Tesla Board of insufficient transparency and independence led to a Delaware judge which abolished it last year. (Tesla responded by reinstating in Texas.) The board of directors granted Musk an temporary scholarship of $ 29 billion last month.

The proposal shows that, despite its controversial movements, Tesla’s board of directors considers Musk as a crucial part of the success of the automaker and that the musk era is far from over. “This new pay package should keep Elon Musk in Tesla for at least the next decade,” said Goldstein.

The objectives of the package double on the messages of Tesla “master plan Part IV”, a high mission statement published this week exclusively on X, the Musk social platform. Tesla’s main plans were formerly cheeky blogs published directly by Musk on the Tesla website, with energy costs at the back of the envelope. The new plan indicates Tesla’s more civilizational ambitions. “Autonomy must benefit all humanity,” says a section; “Higher access leads to greater growth,” reads another, with optimus robots serving cocktails and watering.

But if Musk wants to change the world and make his trillion, he will have to stay in his way – and outside that of President Donald Trump, for whom he has already been “first boyfriend”. The committee managed by the Board of Directors which developed the remuneration proposal met Musk 10 times since February, wrote the board of directors of Tesla in its file. Among other things, the file indicates that the committee has received “assurances that Musk’s participation in the political sphere would end in a timely manner”.