Musk’s $1T pay package is full of watered-down versions of his own broken promises

Summary

Tesla has proposed a massive new $1 trillion compensation package for its CEO Elon Musk, and many of the benchmarks he needs to hit are simply watered-down versions of promises he’s spent years making about the company. That’s not the picture Tesla’s board of directors paints in the company’s annual proxy statement, where they revealed the proposed pay package. Instead, the board focuses on how it plans to create “the most valuable company in history.” To be sure, if Tesla accomplishes all that it aims for with this deal, it will look like a much different company at the end of the 10-year period it covers. That doesn’t change the fact that the milestones the company is asking Musk to aim for are less ambitious than his own previously-stated goals. While the unprecedented pay package still needs to be approved by shareholders at a meeting in November, it’s easy to see the company’s fervent fan base voting “yes.” Previous votes on Musk’s compensation have been overwhelmingly approved by Tesla’s shareholders. With that in mind, let’s take a look at what Musk needs to accomplish in order to receive the full payout. defaultImage Credits:Justin Sullivan / Getty Images 20 million cars … total Musk spent years claiming Tesla would be able to make 20 million electric vehicles per year by 2030. This was back when he and his company were still promising to grow at a rate of 50% each year. But Tesla walked away from those promises as sales growth stalled, and then reversed in 2024. The company then pulled the 20-million-per-year goal from its impact report last year, and stopped building a planned factory in Mexico that would have increased production. Techcrunch event San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025 Now, the first “product goal” that Tesla’s board of directors laid out for Musk to achieve on his path to becoming a trillionaire is to deliver 20 million vehicles total. Tesla has already sold eight million cars to date, and even with sales slumping, is moving just shy of 2 m...