Tesla shareholders approved a pay package on Thursday that could make CEO Elon Musk, already the world’s richest person, the world’s first trillionaire.

Tesla announced that more than 75% of shares voted in favor of the pay package during the company’s annual shareholder meeting. The vote didn’t include the 15% of the company that Musk already owns.

The crowd at the meeting broke into cheers and chants when the results were announced. Musk thanked the shareholders and the Tesla board soon after. “I super appreciate it,” he said.

Musk doesn’t take any salary, but the approved pay package comes in the form of a stock grant that would give him as much as 423.7 million additional Tesla shares over the next 10 years.

Those shares could be worth about $1 trillion, assuming the company reaches the $8.5 trillion market cap needed to have Musk qualify for the full potential payout. In addition, Tesla needs to achieve a series of either operational or financial targets for him to get the full number of shares, which would be distributed in 12 equal blocks.

Getting all the shares available under this package over the next 10 years would be the equivalent of earning $275 million a day, dwarfing any other executive pay package in history.

Lofty targets for stock growth

For Tesla to reach the $8.5 trillion in market value needed, shares need to jump 466% from today’s stock price. That’s also about 70% higher than the world’s most valuable company, Nvidia, which hit a record $5 trillion market cap last week.

Musk is already worth an estimated $473 billion according to Bloomberg’s billionaire tracker, most due to his holdings in Tesla, as well as the other companies he controls, including SpaceX and xAI.

A vote to reject the pay package Thursday could have meant his exit from Tesla’s CEO office. Tesla’s board said in a filing that Musk had raised the possibility of leaving the company if he didn’t get the assurances of control that the pay package could grant him.

However, the company has had a rocky year. Sales and profits plunged in the first half and Tesla faces potential billions in lost revenue due to reduced US government support for electric vehicles.

A future bet on robots and AI

But Musk and Tesla executives dismiss those problems, saying Tesla is shifting focus from merely selling EVs to selling self-driving cars, including a fleet of “robotaxis,” as well as humanoid robots.

In his remarks to shareholders, Musk spoke more about robots, which have yet to go on sale, than he did about the company’s cars. Most of his references to cars were about its so-called full self-driving (FSD), a driver assistance feature that still requires drivers to stay alert and ready to take control of the cars.

But Musk said the robots will be bigger than the company’s car business – or any other business, even.

“I think it’s going to be the biggest product of all time by far,” he said. “So like bigger than cell phones, bigger than anything. I guess a way to think about it is that every human on Earth is going to want to have their own personal R2D2 or C3PO.”

He even predicted Tesla’s robots could replace surgeons, lead to the end of global poverty and re-shape the global economic order. He claims they could be produced for $20,000 each, allowing the company to sell them for about the price of a car.

Still, those products and concepts are still under development and haven’t gone on sale. That means even with the passage of the pay package, it’s not certain that Musk will ever see any of its potential hundreds of millions of shares. He will need to straighten out the company’s current problems and then live up to the big promises that he’s made for the future.

Musk has insisted he needs the additional shares to have more control over the company, not because he wants so much more wealth.

“It’s not like I’m going to go spend the money,” Musk said on a call with investors last month. “There needs to be enough voting control to give (me) a strong influence – but not so much that I can’t be fired if I go insane.” (CNN)

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that India, like every other country, should have electric car and it will be a natural progression for his company to provide Tesla electric vehicles in India.

“India is now the most populous country in the world, based on population. India should have electric cars just like every other country has electric cars. It’s a natural progression to provide Tesla electric vehicles in India,” Musk said in a X Spaces session with Nicolai Tangen, the Chief Executive Officer at Norges Bank Investment Management.

The billionaire CEO said in the future “all vehicles will go electric and it is just a matter of time.”

Tesla has lately intensified its efforts to bolster its presence in the Indian market and is actively scouting for a suitable location to set up a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant.

As per sources, the state governments of Maharashtra and Gujarat have extended lucrative land offers to Tesla Inc. for the establishment of an electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing plant, signalling a major stride in India’s electric mobility landscape.

Sources said the proposed plant, will have an estimated investment between USD 2 billion to USD 3 billion, and will aim to cater both domestic and international markets for Tesla‘s electric vehicles.

The move comes in the wake of India’s new EV policy, where incentives have been provided for setting up manufacturing plant in India. As a global EV manufacturer, Tesla plans to establish a robust manufacturing presence in India.

Under the government’s EV scheme, which aims to position India as a preferred manufacturing destination for EVs equipped with cutting-edge technology, several key objectives are outlined.

They include attracting investments from reputable global EV manufacturers, fostering the adoption of advanced EV technology among Indian consumers, and bolstering the country’s Make in India initiative.

The policy has asked for a minimum investment threshold of Rs 4150 crore (USD 500 million) and encouraging manufacturers to achieve significant levels of domestic value addition (DVA), the government mandates that by the third year of setting up the manufacturing unit, at least 25 per cent of the parts used to make the vehicles should be sourced domestically. This localization level is expected to increase to 50 per cent by the fifth year of operation.

For vehicles valued at USD 35,000 or more, a 15 per cent customs duty will be imposed for five years if the manufacturer builds manufacturing facilities in India within three years.

The total number of EVs allowed for import under the policy will be limited based on the investment made. or of a maximum he value of Rs 6484 crore, whichever is lower. If the investment exceeds USD 800 million, a maximum of 40,000 EVs can be imported, with no more than 8,000 per year, as per the policy. Unused import limits can be carried over.

As part of its investment plans, Tesla intends to send a team of experts to scout for suitable locations across India for the proposed manufacturing facility.

The Financial Times reported, citing an Indian official, that the government would formally invite applications for the EV tariff reduction scheme by the end of this month, under which eligible companies will be allowed to import up to 8,000 vehicles a year.

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk in June last year said that he was planning to visit India in 2024, adding that he was confident that the electric carmaker will be in India and will do so “as soon as humanly possible.”

He had told reporters in New York, following a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was then on a historic four-day State visit to the US.

Musk had said that PM Modi invited him to India.

“I would like to thank PM Modi for his support and hopefully, we will be able to announce something in the future,” Musk had said.

In November 2023, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal had visited Tesla‘s manufacturing facility in California’s Fremont and said that the US electric car maker is on its way to double its components imports from India.

Goyal had stressed that he was proud to see the growing importance of auto component suppliers from India in the Tesla EV supply chain. (ANI)

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Tesla is recalling nearly all 2 million of its cars on US roads to limit the use of its Autopilot feature following a two-year probe by US safety regulators of roughly 1,000 crashes in which the feature was engaged.

The limitations on Autopilot serve as a blow to Tesla’s efforts to market its vehicles to buyers willing to pay extra to have their cars do the driving for them.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the Autopilot system can give drivers a false sense of security and be easily misused in certain dangerous situations when a Tesla’s technology may be unable to safely navigate the road. The over-the-air software update will give Tesla drivers more warnings when they are not paying attention to the road while the Autopilot’s “Autosteer” function is turned on. Those notifications will remind drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and pay attention to the road, according to a statement from NHTSA

After the recall, Teslas with Autosteer turned on will more routinely check on the driver’s attention level – and may disengage the feature – when the software determines the driver isn’t paying attention, when the car is approaching traffic controls, or when it’s off the highway when Autosteer alone isn’t sufficient to drive the car.

The recall was disclosed in a letter to Tesla posted by NHTSA, which said that Tesla had agreed to the software update starting on Tuesday that will limit the use of the Autosteer feature if a driver repeatedly fails to demonstrate he or she is ready to resume control of the car while the feature is on.

Tesla has been pushing its driver-assist features, including Autopilot and what it calls “Full Self Driving,” which Tesla has insisted make driving safer than cars operated exclusively by humans. But NHTSA has been studying reports of accidents involving Autopilot and its Autosteer function for more than two years.

The recall comes two days after a detailed investigation was published by the Washington Post that found at least eight serious accidents, including some fatalities, in which the the Autopilot feature should not have been engaged in the first place.

Tesla’s owners manuals say: “Autosteer is intended for use only on highways and limited-access roads with a fully attentive driver.” But the company has pushed the idea that its driver assist features allow the cars to safely make most driving decisions even away from those roads.

A NHTSA investigation, however, has found numerous accidents over the past several years that suggest that these features do not live up to their names of Autopilot and Full Self Driving.

The safety regulator in its letter to Tesla said “in certain circumstances when Autosteer is engaged, the prominence and scope of the feature’s controls may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse [of the feature.]” It said that when drivers are not fully engaged and ready to take control of the car “there may be an increased risk of a crash.”

In addition to the software updates, Tesla will mail letters to car owners notifying them of the change.

A history of Autopilot issues

This is not the first time that NHTSA has pushed Tesla to make changes to its Autopilot or Full Self Driving features after finding the features posed safety problems.

In February, Tesla recalled all 363,000 US vehicles then on the road with its FSD feature after finding cars operating with the feature would violate traffic laws, including “traveling straight through an intersection while in a turn-only lane, entering a stop sign-controlled intersection without coming to a complete stop, or proceeding into an intersection during a steady yellow traffic signal without due caution.”

And NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board have been investigating crashes involving Tesla vehicles using the various driver assist features, including a series of crashes into emergency vehicles on the scene of other accidents.

Tesla is not the only automaker offering driver assist features marketed as “self-driving.” And it is not the only one to run into safety problems. Recently General Motors’ Cruise unit suspended its driverless taxi service nationwide after California authorities suspended its ability to operate the system there after an accident.

But, because it markets the names Autopilot and Full Self Driving, Tesla has made a greater emphasis than competitors on self-driving. It charges buyers $6,000 for cars with what it calls “enhanced Autopilot.” and $12,000 for the FSD feature.

Many who paid extra for those features have told CNN they think the features are not worth the extra money. But while the features have found support among other owners, the reports of serious accidents and deaths by police and safety regulators could hurt Tesla’s efforts to market the cars and their expensive features.

Autopilot’s importance to Tesla

Tesla is already the most valuable automaker in the world, by far, despite having a fraction of the sales of many established automakers such as Toyota, Volkswagen, General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.

Investors are betting on projections of future sales growth as well as the value of its software in making those stock valuations. CEO Elon Musk has said the company’s investment in artificial intelligence and its use in both self-driving vehicles as well as its plans for humanoid robots are a key to its current and future value.

“In the long term, I think, has the potential to make Tesla the most valuable company in the world by far,” Musk said in October on a call with Wall Street analysts. “If you have fully autonomous cars at scale and fully autonomous humanoid robots that are truly useful, it’s not clear what the limit is.”

Tesla’s stock fell slightly Wednesday. (CNN)

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