Tesla shareholders have voted to ratify CEO Elon Musk’s mega 2018 pay package, which is said to be worth $56 billion (RM267 billion). It comes after Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm said that the Musk might leave if he is denied the compensation, in a final appeal to the shareholders.
This is the second time they are voting on the CEO’s salary after a judge from Delaware state voided the first one earlier this year on the grounds that the approval process was “deeply flawed”. While this vote doesn’t override that, it provides a PR victory for Musk and could help his effort to sway a court to give him his performance options in the future, CNBC reports.
A happy Musk took the stage after the preliminary results and said, “I just want to start off by saying hot d—! I love you guys.”
The annual meeting in Austin, Texas also saw final votes on other proposals, including an effort by Musk to move Tesla’s site of incorporation out of Delaware – where most large publicly traded companies are incorporated -and into Texas, home to the automaker’s largest US factory. Shareholders voted in favour of this move.
At the meeting, Musk promised Tesla shareholders that the company is making great progress on developing ‘vehicle autonomy’ or systems to turn existing Tesla cars into self-driving vehicles, which he believes can ’10x the value of the company’.
However, he has been promising such autonomous technology since 2016 and has yet to deliver, while companies such as Pony.ai, Didi and Waymo have developed robotaxis and already operate commercial services with them, CNBC points out.
Musk also declared Tesla’s ambition to create a ridehailing network with its cars equipped with self-driving systems, although he didn’t share timelines. “There’ll be some cars that Tesla owns itself. But then for the fleet that is owned by our customers, it will be like an Airbnb thing. You can add or subtract your car to the fleet whenever you want,” he said.
The charismatic CEO also promised that Tesla would move into “limited production” of Optimus in 2025 and test out the humanoid robots in its own factories next year. Next year, there will be “over 1,000, or a few thousand, Optimus robots working at Tesla,” he said.
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