Tesla The shareholders have agreed to choose “Ludicrous Mode”. Elon Musk’s salary agreementwith the outspoken CEO expected to earn up to $1 trillion (A$1.54 trillion) if certain targets are met.
According to Tesla, the $1 trillion compensation package was approved with over 75 percent of the vote. Mr. Musk, who owns about 15 percent of Tesla shares, was allowed to vote on the salary agreement.
Like his previous US$56 billion (A$86 billion) stimulus package, Mr Musk’s latest blockbuster deal will be triggered gradually as certain milestones are reached over the next decade. These include 20 million Teslas on the road, deploying 1 million self-driving taxis, and hitting a range of valuation targets from $2 trillion to $8.5 trillion.
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The previous $56 billion package is currently in court after being invalidated twice by a Delaware court in 2024.
Before the vote, Tesla Chairwoman Robyn Denholm warned that Mr. Musk could leave the automaker if the proposal fails because he would “perceive that as a negative sign for his leadership.”
In addition to being CEO of Tesla, Mr. Musk is also CEO of SpaceX and xAI, the artificial intelligence company that now owns X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
He’s done with his posts
After the shareholder vote was confirmed, Mr. Musk took the stage at the company’s annual meeting and said the company’s future lay in artificial intelligence and robotics.
He claimed the company’s Optimus robot is “by far the greatest product ever” and that Tesla will release a Version 3 prototype in 2026.
After previously predicting that the company will sell 1 million robots per year within five years, Musk went further, saying it was possible to reach “literally 100 million per year, maybe even a billion per year.”
Tesla’s Fremont, California factory is said to be capable of building one million robots per year, while the Austin, Texas factory is reportedly designed to produce up to 10 million robots per year.
It is unknown whether Tesla is currently on track to achieve this goal. Mr. Musk’s previous claims of having a million self-driving taxis on the road by 2020 have not materialized, as the company only launched its robotaxi service in Austin this year and Tesla has repeatedly missed launch dates for its semi-truck, which it unveiled in 2017.
While Mr. Musk envisions a shift in focus for Tesla, the company’s main product currently remains electric vehicles. In this context, he says that Tesla will increase production in the next few years, with demand driven by the company’s self-driving technology.
The company’s two-door, two-seat Cybercab is scheduled to enter production in April 2026 and will complement the company’s self-driving taxi fleet available in some markets in the United States. Unlike current Model Y-based autonomous taxis, the Cybercab will not have a human in the front seat to monitor performance and take over in emergencies.
Through the end of September, Tesla’s global sales fell about 6 percent to 1.22 million units, putting it second behind BYD, which reported a 37 percent increase to 1.61 million vehicles.
According to the Forbes According to the real-time billionaires list, Elon Musk is the richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of US$482 billion (AU$742 billion). He is well ahead of the rest of the top 5: Oracle’s Larry Ellison ($295 billion), Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ($255 billion) and Google founders Larry Page ($230 billion) and Sergei Brin ($214 billion).
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