When Tesla’s board of directors approved Elon Musk’s record-breaking executive pay package in September, they assured investors that he would only be rewarded if he achieved bold “Mars-shot milestones” — goals tied to transforming Tesla and advancing society through robotics, autonomous driving, soaring stock value, and strong profits. According to the proposal, Musk would walk away with nothing unless he reached these highly ambitious targets.
However, a newspaper analysis — supported by insights from over a dozen experts in executive pay, valuation, robotics, and autonomous driving — suggests that Musk could still secure tens of billions without meeting most of the toughest requirements. In fact, by accomplishing just a small set of the easier benchmarks, Musk could earn more than $50 billion without radically changing Tesla’s products or business.
Even achieving only two of the simplest milestones, paired with moderate stock growth, could land him $26 billion. That amount exceeds the combined lifetime earnings of the next eight highest-paid CEOs, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, according to research firm Equilar’s analysis for Newspapers.
According to four automotive experts, Musk’s vehicle sales targets are relatively easy to accomplish. If Tesla manages to sell an average of 1.2 million cars annually over the next decade, Musk would secure $8.2 billion in stock—provided the company’s market value increases from today’s $1.4 trillion to $2 trillion by 2035. That growth projection is below long-term market averages and represents around 500,000 fewer cars per year than Tesla sold in 2024.
On Tuesday, Tesla introduced more affordable versions of its top-selling Model Y SUV and Model 3 sedan in an effort to counter declining sales.
Meanwhile, three of the product development goals tied to Musk’s pay plan are described so vaguely that they could yield Musk substantial payouts without meaningfully improving Tesla’s profitability, six experts in robotics and autonomous driving told Media.
Tesla and Musk declined to comment on the matter.
A Tesla board spokesperson stated that the proposed compensation plan would “be worth nothing to our CEO unless the company nearly doubles in value and achieves a key operational milestone.”
The plan also requires Musk to remain in an executive role at Tesla for at least seven and a half years before he can receive any stock-based payouts. However, once the awards are granted, he would immediately gain the voting rights tied to those shares.
Last month, Musk wrote on his social media platform X that the package “is not about compensation, but about ensuring I have enough influence at Tesla to safeguard the company if we produce millions of robots.”
In its proposal, the board also emphasized that Musk is driven by more than just traditional financial rewards.
Self-Driving Cars, Robotaxis and Robotics
Under Tesla’s compensation plan, each performance goal gives Musk 1% of the company’s stock if he also hits valuation targets ranging from $2 trillion to $8.5 trillion.
One of these goals requires 10 million subscriptions to Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) software — a system that still cannot operate without human supervision. On Thursday, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced an investigation into 2.88 million Tesla vehicles equipped with FSD after receiving more than 50 reports of traffic-safety violations and crashes.
Notably, Musk’s goal does not demand that Tesla make FSD fully autonomous. Instead, it only calls for an “advanced driving system,” a phrase that has no clear industry definition, according to William Widen, a University of Miami law professor specializing in autonomous driving.
Experts say the subscription target could be relatively easy to reach simply by lowering the price, which currently costs $8,000 upfront or $99 per month. By comparison, Tesla’s main EV competitor, China’s BYD, already offers a similar system for free.
“If I were Musk’s personal employment lawyer, I’d be happy with these vague definitions,” said Matthew Wansley, a professor at New York’s Cardozo School of Law who specializes in autonomous driving.
