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

Tesla launched a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, earlier this summer, but it’s unclear whether the vehicles driving around the city are technologically advanced enough to count toward that 1 million robotaxi goal. (The proposal specifies that the robotaxis must not have a “human driver,” and the vehicles in Texas have safety monitors sitting in their front passenger seats for city rides and in the driver’s seats for highway trips.)

Meanwhile, the company is reportedly falling well short of its goal to produce 5,000 units of Optimus, its humanoid robot, by the end of this year, having produced only a few hundred. Musk has said that Optimus could one day revolutionize the global economy by replacing the majority of human labor, but The Information reported in July that the Optimus team was having particular trouble with the robot’s hands. The company’s vice president of Optimus robotics, a nine-year Tesla veteran, left in June.

“For Musk to receive the full pay package, Tesla will need to be the leader of autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots in a number of countries,” says Seth Goldstein, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, a financial services firm.

Musk’s past pay packages have been unconventional and controversial. Unlike other CEOs, Musk does not receive annual compensation or incentives but is instead paid according to Tesla’s long-term performance. His 2018 pay package, worth more than $50 billion, is still in legal limbo after a shareholder lawsuit accusing the Tesla board of insufficient transparency and independence led to a Delaware judge striking it down last year. (Tesla responded by reincorporating in Texas.) The board granted Musk an interim $29 billion stock award last month.

The proposal demonstrates that, despite Musk’s controversial moves, Tesla’s board sees him as a crucial part of the automaker’s success and that the Musk era is far from over. “This new pay package should keep Elon Musk at Tesla for at least the next decade,” says Goldstein.

The package’s goals double down on the messages of Tesla’s “Master Plan Part IV,” a lofty mission statement posted this week exclusively on X, Musk’s social platform. Tesla’s Master Plans were once cheeky blogs posted directly by Musk onto Tesla’s website, complete with back-of-the-envelope energy cost calculations. The new plan points to Tesla’s more civilizational ambitions. “Autonomy must benefit all of humanity,” one section reads; “Greater access drives greater growth,” reads another, complete with renderings of Optimus robots serving cocktails and watering plants.

But if Musk wants to change the world and make his trillion, he’ll have to stay in his lane—and out of President Donald Trump’s, for whom he once served as “First Buddy”. The board-run committee that put together the pay proposal has met with Musk 10 times since February, the Tesla board wrote in its filing. Among other things, the filing reads, the committee received “assurances that Musk’s involvement with the political sphere would wind down in a timely manner.”