Tesla CEO Elon Musk says shareholders have already approved his $US56 billion ($A84 billion) pay package by a “wide margin”, even before the company’s shareholder meeting due to be held on Thursday in the US (Friday morning Australian time).
Musk used his social media platform X on the eve of the shareholder meeting to announce that “both Tesla shareholder resolutions are currently passing by wide margins! Thanks for your support.”
Reuters quoted company insiders as confirming the voting pattern. A formal announcement will be made at the meeting, but the outcome now appears to be a fait accompli.
The vote was called by Musk after the $US56 billion package, negotiated in 2018 and described then as the largest ever in US corporate history, was voided by a Delaware judge who declared that it had been approved by a board “beholden” to Musk.
The company, and many investors, have argued that the pay package is critical to keep Musk engaged in the company, particularly given his distractions elsewhere with SpaceX and X. He has even threatened to build his AI and robotics products outside Tesla if the package was rejected.
Not all shareholders are convinced. Some, such as Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and California’s two largest pension funds have said they will vote against the compensation, saying it is excessive.
It comes as Tesla misses sales targets and has its market share eaten into, particularly by China EV makers, even though it remains the biggest make of EVs in the world.
Tesla’s biggest threat comes from China’s BYD, which has claimed to have more electric sales than Tesla, but whose figures also include some hybrid sales in its domestic market.
But the growth of China EV makers is now being challenged by then imposition of tariffs in the US – ostensibly to protect GM and Ford who have struggled with the electric transition – and now by the EU, which has advised of a 38 per cent tariff of Chinese EVs, mostly for the same reasons.
That decision is likely to complicate matters for many EU car makers, particularly those involved in joint ventures with China car companies, as the Chinese government contemplates retaliatory measures.
But Tesla and Musk are thinking about more than just EVs – the push into AI, robotics and self driving vehicles is seen as the big growth area for the company. No other western car maker appears able to catch up, and Musk has been watching with envy the stunning growth of Nvidia in recent months.
“The car is an extension of the phone,” Morgan Stanley analysts write in a new report. “The phone is an extension of the car. The lines between car and phone are truly blurring.”
It notes that Musk has said a device described as a “mobile Ai assistant”, similar to Apple’s WWDC, is not out of the question, and such a product could overlap with his own efforts on AI programs such as “Grok”.
The Morgan Stanley analysts note that Tesla drivers already use a smart phone as the key to their cars.
“What if your phone could tap into your vehicle’s compute power and battery supply to run AI applications?” they ask.
“From an automotive perspective, the topic of supercomputing at both the data center level and at the edge are highly relevant given the incremental global unit sold is a car that can perform OTA updates of firmware, has a battery with a stored energy equivalent of approx. 2,000 iPhones, and a liquid cooled inference supercomputer as standard kit.”
Maybe soon we will find out if that is the plan.
Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of The Driven, and also edits and founded the Renew Economy and One Step Off The Grid web sites. He has been a journalist for nearly 40 years, is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review, and owns a Tesla Model 3.