Elon Musk’s polarizing political actions since acquiring Twitter, later rebranded X, in 2022 dramatically hurt the automaker’s U.S. sales, underscoring how deeply its fortunes are intertwined with the billionaire’s persona.
The findings quantify for the first time how the political actions of the world’s wealthiest person – including his role in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration – may have cost Tesla billions in lost vehicle sales while benefiting rival electric carmakers.
Tesla’s U.S. sales would have been between 67% and 83% higher, or about 1 million to 1.26 million additional vehicles, from October 2022 to April 2025, had it not been for what researchers call the “Musk partisan effect,” according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research by Yale University economists.
Then why are they wanting to pay him 1 trillion dollars? Rich people are weird.
Because Musk is asking for it, and the Tesla board who are all his hand picked friends, are the ones that vote on it.
The board doesn’t vote on his compensation package, the shareholders do. The pay committee proposes his compensation package to the shareholders and then they all vote on it.
https://fortune.com/2025/10/27/tesla-board-chair-robyn-denholm-shareholders-elon-musk-1-trillion-pay-package/
Are you being willfully ignorant or are you not aware that during a proxy vote, shareholders that don’t cast an individual vote let the board vote for them? The VAST MAJORITY of shareholders don’t vote. This hands an enormous amount of votes to the board that vote how they want. A proxy vote that goes against the boards recommendation, is very rare in the corporate world.
He put two LED light bars on the old Model Y and came up with a cheap Model Y that covers the existing glass roof in headliner fabric.
How is that not innovation?
Don’t forget he took the lidar sensors out to make self driving way better. Oh wait
Radar and ultrasonic. I don’t think they ever had lidar.
It had lidar rangefinders I believe. Nothing like the lidar scanners on actual delft driving cars, but still better than just cameras.
He took out manual door handles to make 4D chess figures.
I was going to say “what about the cybertruck” but I guess everyone wants to throw him in an oubliette for that.
And rightfully so
I wouldn’t presume to speak for anyone else’s motives. Mine are much more pedestrian; I want him in the oubliette because he’s a monster who needs forgetting about.
Of course! We therefore have 2 reasons to throw him in (and probably more).
Tesla has to hit 10Trillion to get that pay out. It will not.
Because he did one thing right. He didn’t build a traditional investor base, he built a cult.
Like Joseph Smith and L Ron Hubbard.
He controls the board. So it’s him wanting to pay him that (with the stipulation he magically increases the company market cap to like 8 trillion or something - like 4x what it currently is)
I thought they were setting him up for a graceful exit when they could not agree on a ridiculous pay package