"I've read that his record-shattering deal had the stockholders up on their feet dancing, chanting his name, and applauding"

We have a term for groups which exhibit such behaviour at meetings - a cult.

And an almost identically spelt word for people who think they are worth that much.... :)

'Almost identically spelt'?

I think not. I would hazard exactly 75% identically spelt.

Considering the two words as ASCII strings, there are only two bits that are different in the two. If we assume 8-bit characters, that puts them at 93.75% identical. About 92.86% if we consider 7-bit ASCII.

"I would hazard exactly 75% identically spelt."

Not me. I prefer whole wheat flour over spelt.

almost identically spelt word for people …

Celt ?

"And an almost identically spelt word for people who think they are worth that much.... :)"

With this name calling, you do realize that you insult half of humanity. That half cannot be held responsible for the behavior of a creature that is not a member and has nothing but contempt for them.

There was a time when Musk might in theory have been able to do it. But not after he went full Nazi while pushing a product that appeals more to liberals, and at the same time linking himself inextricably with the one person on Earth of whom you can say simply "Is he dead yet?" and nobody needs to ask who you're talking about.

All those are fair criticisms, but if he were a paragon of liberal values who's best friends were Mr Rogers and David Attenborough he still couldn't do this. The saturation point for EV's - never mind Teslas - just doesn't make those numbers realistic. People just don't have that much to spend on cars total right now. That's before we get anywhere near the "Million robots" thing or the "Fully autonomous driving" thing, neither of which are going to happen inside the requisite timescale from a technological standpoint alone.

...there is hyperinflation. It happened before in many countries and unconventional economic policies of popular leaders more then once were the cause to hyperinflation. I don't say there will be hyperinflation, but if there were then he'd easy gain his bonus for doing nothing more then a bit of creative goal chassing. And no, hyperinflation wouldn't make his trillion dollar package worthless. The package is expressed in percentage of total Tesla shares, not in dollar amount. Share prices skyrocket also during hyperinflation.

With hyperinflation, all monetairy numbers to be obtained are trivial. Just making *any* profit at all over 10 years time then is the actual challenge.

The other 'hurdles'?

* Deliver 20 million vehicles? Rebrand cheap Chinese ones and sell as Tesla at very low margin.

* Sell a million "Optimus" humanoid robots? I read an in dept analysis that the actual requirements don't even require "humanoid". So even toys would do. Or humanoid 500 dollar a piece toys.

* Roll out at least a million commercially operational self-driving robotaxi units? Roll out a (Uber style) service called self-driving robotaxis that is nothing but a rebrand on existing Tesla's held by private owners open for almost fsd taxi service.

* Last but not least, Tesla must have 10 million Full Self-Driving (FSD) subscribers. Offer it for 10 dollar a year or as a requirement to get seat heating. Some Chinese brands already offer it for free.

=> In case of hyperinflation, a big if, things can be very easy obtained by cheating (without breaking the letter of the deal nor the law) towards the goal.

Either way, the targets to obtain "only" tens of billions of rewards are very light too. It's not an all or nothing bonus.

With hyperinflation, you will not be able to buy bread for that one trillion dollars. I guess, with hyperinflation, you can get away with giving that guy a set of steak knives and have overpaid him by a significant factor.

As said, Elon is not awarded a 1 Trillion dollar package. He is awarded a large percentage of stock as a reward if he meets the goals.

Calling it a "Trillion dollar package" is sloppy journalism that so many news outlets do, because it makes for better and far more spectacular headlines then saying "x percent of Tesla shares" (roughly 12% by what I found so far). Remember that the bulk of CEO bonus rewards are (underlying) expressed in shares, not in actual dollars.

So with hyperinflation, the value of the package still remains roughly 12% of total Tesla shares. So the total value then would be (dollar value per share adjusted for hyperinflation) * (total amount of shares awarded). The full award hence would be roughly 12% of whatever Tesla as a company is valuated on the stock market then. If it isn't bankrupt by then, that'll be far more then a set of steak knives.

To go even further, if he reached the goal he could even further increase the value of his package by doing share buybacks. Then even with obtaining far less goals he could obtain a large percentage of Tesla.

Example:

By what I found he now has 13% and could obtain 12% more of Tesla if he reached all goals. Now if his award is expressed in percentage of *current* shares, reaching only the goal needed for obtaining an award of 6% and having Tesla itself (not Elon) buy back half of its outstanding shares would still be equivallent to obtaining a 12% bonus today

* Roll out at least a million commercially operational self-driving robotaxi units? Another option to obtain this goal is to buy a successfull Asian / worldwide "robotaxi Uber" with over a million active robottaxis and rebrand them Tesla's by paying a license fee to the producer of the cars too.

Speaking of the profit and market cap goals: there are other options too. Just try and merge Tesla with a successfull and profitable Asain / worldwide "robotaxi Uber" and call the new company Tesla too. The profit and market cap near automatically go up. Nobody mentioned it couldn't be for a merged company with double or tripple the amount of shareholders didn't it?

If I can find all these option so quickly, Elon can too. It seems the shareholders were caught sleepwalking.

It's a massively delusional cult, there's no other explanation for that. And I saw it, they played a clip on the news that night.

Meanwhile, everybody who buys Tesla might care to remember that this money isn't going to come out of thin air. I wonder how much of the price goes to shareholders, to Musk...

The human body has roughly 30 trillion cells (puzzlingly males slightly more, females slightly less) so USD1.0 trillion is a little more than 3 cents for each of Space Karen's cells. Obvious jokes about girlfriends, blood and other banks... not affording his services.

The brain has about 100 billion cells so for our trillionaire, USD 10.00 per brain cell increasing with Special-K (ab)usage.

Worth printing $1,000,000,000 in greenbacks, to take with him, as a reward for his personally reaching Mars in the next three years. (And staying there.)

Although in recent pictures he is looking decidely "later middle aged" and likely starting to discernl the reaper in background although in his case it might be the rat † that does the honours. So he might not actually be around for the payout.

† who presumably squeaks in SMALL CAPS .

Presumably because on average males are slightly bigger?

If (gigantic if) someone can raise the value of my shares by a factor of 5, I'd happily let them have 20% of the profit. That's all this is saying (apart from all the other caveats).

This might have been true back in the days where Standard Oil and Bell were broken up, but nowadays regulatory capture is a well versed skill along with social media hype trains and "pivots" to new sectors.

Sadly it's not going to come crashing to a halt and if it does then those at the top will walk away with more money than ever and just start over elsewhere....

[engineer] [looks up from article] A *trillion* dollars? Wow! That should keep him out of our hair for a bit.

Muskiday can securitize this chance of getting $1T in Tesla stock options. That is, he can borrow money on this securitized stock option promise or he can sell it.

Who is willing to bet a few billion dollars on this gamble?

This is valuable as there are suckers born every minute.

"Muskiday can securitize this chance of getting $1T in Tesla stock options. That is, he can borrow money on this securitized stock option promise or he can sell it."

There's supposed to be an embargo on Elon selling this new tranche of stock for 5 years. That's a long way into the future for a bank to accept as security to feel comfortable. There's also the issue of when those milestones will be achieved and the stock/options awarded. If another court rescinds the deal again, that could be sticky.

Stock as security is acceptable up to a point. Tesla's stock price is extremely high compared to their capital assets and high probability income. If the next US President eases tariffs and import restrictions on Chinese EV's, Tesla is in real trouble. Ford and GM as well. Tesla's charging network is a unit they should be focusing more on solidifying. It can show a solid, predictable income that makes creditors happy to see. Since it's required that people have an account with Tesla to use the Superchargers, I'm guessing they are also bringing in income by selling PII as well. I'd be amazed if their user account agreement didn't have provisions that allow them to "share" information with their "partners". I expect they all do that which is why there's no paying with cash. With Tesla, since their dispensers don't have any sort of interface, there's a requirement to be signed up with them and agreeing to their terms.

Banks will accept stock as security at a discount that varies with company stability and there are calls in place if the stock drops below a certain point.

I wasn't clear, I see.

The idea is like mortgage securitization as used before the 2008 financial meltdown. There are undoubtedly laws against any of what I think, but there are also highly paid lawyers and accountants who know how to get around these laws.

Muskiday sets up an entity that will receive the bonus stocks when they can be sold, and this "promise" is put on paper. Then participation in this entity can be bought for cents on the dollar. 1% of $1T is still $10B.

As I wrote, there will be rules against this, and lawyers who know how to get around them. Probably involving cryptocurrencies and pay-outs to the most corrupt politician of all ages, or whatever he calls himself today.

A graph of car totals over time from Tesla has been ramping up since Marc and Martin founded the company and started delivering the first Roadster (delayed by Elon). That's slowing considerably since they haven't produced a viable new model in many years. The main metric for payouts to Elon seems to be stock price. With a goal like that and several nearly impossible other goals, the focus will be on pumping the stock until the stock awards at least equal that roughly $55bn payout nullified by the courts. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of foundational goals. No new factories, new car models, a more compatible and profitable charging network, etc. The base of the company is riddled with porosity. Putting batteries in big boxes, while profitable, isn't rocket surgery and Tesla wasn't the first in that market and doesn't hold any advantage over other large players. The barrier to entry is also not that high. There's a certain scale needed for a rival company to look solid enough to convince customers to buy, but that's just money and not a large amount (comparatively).

The things that people believe will send the stock into higher realms are a lot of dreaming. There is no humanoid robot market existing so there has to be an application demonstrated that shows commercial buyers a solid ROI. Common Sense Skeptic did an analysis on whether Starlink could ever become profitable and part of that was showing worldwide annual incomes (in US dollars) across the world. If most of the world's population can't afford Starlink, there's no way they could afford Optimus nor does it seem they could earn enough return on one if they could somehow get financing. To portray them as a cheap household servant when more and more people can't afford to buy a house (in central London, LA, NY), is silly.

Robocabs are a curiosity that only seem to have any chance at a profit in dense city centers where taxis are commonly used by people over owning their own vehicle. Some proponents try to show that the numbers will work in other places buy seem to be optimistic about cleaning, vandalism and costs for insurance and certifications. There would also need to be some way to recharge them and while inductive charging seems like a good solution, for a large number of vehicles in a fleet, the losses may be more expensive than having a parking lot staff person that can plug the cars in and hose out the sick, remove the take away rubbish and erase the more profane graffiti.

> Way too many of the one percent, and those who desperately want to be in the one percent [...]

This isn't about the one percent. Globally, probably I am in the 1%, just by virtue of living in a Western country and having a good job.

This is about the one percent of the one percent of the fucking one percent , ogling upwards at the one percent of themselves . Nobody is going to convince me that society is made better by having these categories.

[Sell a million "Optimus" humanoid robots. To date there are no production Optimus robots, let alone any walking around in the real world.]

Step 1: Buy iRobot, the company that makes Roomba

Step 2: Change all Roombas names to Optimus

Step 3: ?

Step 4: Profit!

I'd argue that most of Teslas board members should be subject to a sanity check. The only saving grace is the provision that sets some performance benchmarks before the nazi gets his payout. But to even consider 1T golden parachute...

Also, average "investors" should reconsider their engagement in stock market in general. Clearly the original purpose of getting funds to expand business is no longer true. It's just a shell game to benefit boards, CEOs and stock brokers (always) and should be treated as such for tax purposes.