The Fake $1 Trillion Nail in Tesla's Coffin

Where control and delusions meet, only catastrophe can ensue.

Photo by Bram Van Oost on Unsplash

So, Musk won the vote for his “$1 trillion pay package”. Truth be told, I am not that surprised. But what does this mean for Tesla and its future? Well, in short, nothing good. This is the final cast-off, solidifying Musk as an untouchable authoritarian king of Tesla, enabling and exaggerating his already broken delusions — all while Tesla leaves the shores of reality and sails off into the murky waters of a demonstrably false unreality. It will all end in tears.

Let’s start off by de-propagandising this mess.

This isn’t a $1 trillion pay package. Logically, Musk would be paid in Tesla stock, and for this payday to be worth $1 trillion, Tesla would have to be worth $8.5 trillion, or just less than eight times its current value. This is more than 50% more than the current most valuable company in the world, Nvidia, whose value most experts believe is significantly inflated by the AI bubble. This value increase isn’t one of the conditions for Musk receiving his payout; instead, it is assumed this is how much Tesla will be worth if he achieves the other conditions. However, one of these conditions is that Musk receives annual revenue up to $400 billion and an $8.4 trillion valuation, which would give Tesla a P/E ratio (the value of its stock to its earnings) of 21,250, or over 100 times its current, already far too high, P/E ratio. So no — in no fucking world is this a $1 trillion pay package. You would have to be out of your mind to believe that for a second. It is more like a $100 billion package. This “$1 trillion” thing is just a PR stunt, a way to make Musk and Tesla look much more impressive than they actually are (with more on that in a minute).

On top of that, the conditions Musk has to meet to receive this payday are nowhere near specific enough to hold him to account and ensure he actually delivers growth. I have already written about this, so if you want to know the details, read more here.

Take the condition that by 2035, Musk is expected to deliver one million Bots. (Tesla defines “Bot” as “any robot or other physical product with mobility using artificial intelligence manufactured by or on behalf of the company” — yet, somehow, the company’s vehicles do not count). Firstly, it is odd that they use the word “delivered” instead of “sold”, given that the number of sales are a much better metric for growth. In fact, the proper metric for growth would be how many Bots are in active use and the duration of this time period. So, for Musk to meet this condition, he doesn’t even need to sell the Optimus robot he has been parading around. He can give SpaceX a million AI-powered RC cars, akin to that weird robot on the Death Star, and technically achieve this condition. SpaceX doesn’t even have to use them!

Every single one of these pay package conditions is worded in such a way that Musk can meet them without delivering any actual growth. That is a giant red flag. But we should have expected this, as Tesla’s Master Plan 4, which these conditions are based on, still lacks any real detail — it’s more like a buzzword salad flopped together by Grok.

So, it isn’t a $1 trillion pay package at all; it is closer to a $100 billion pay package (even though this is still far too large for any executive pay), and all of the conditions Musk must meet to get this pay package are worded in such a purposefully broad way, that Musk can meet them all without delivering a single ounce of growth.

Okay, but does Musk deserve this money?

Well, I am firmly in the camp that no one should be a billionaire, let alone have a single $100 billion payday. So, ethically, I don’t think Musk deserves it. This is a man who could have solved world hunger but chose to fund fascism instead, after all.

But when you look at the state of Tesla, it’s hard to argue Musk should even be CEO.

His big projects — the Cybertruck, FSD, and Robotaxi — are demonstrable failures. The Cybertruck was supposed to solidify Tesla’s dominance in the EV market, but instead, it is the largest automotive sales flop in history. FSD was supposed to allow Tesla to produce the first self-driving car, but the systems is demonstrably dangerous and light-years behind the competition. Not to mention it too is a sales flop, with Tesla having to slash its prices to even get a handful of customers through the door. Likewise, the Robotaxi is horrifyingly dangerous, which has stalled its rollout, and in the meantime, competitors like Waymo have continued to rapidly expand. Each of these projects has cost Tesla billions of dollars, and none of them are even close to breaking even, let alone making a profit.

And it is all because of Musk’s woeful micromanagement.

Consider that time Musk ignored his executives’ advice not to focus on Robotaxis, as they discovered that even if they could make them work, they wouldn’t make any money, and instead they should focus on building a more affordable EV (read more here). Now, the Model Y has lost its title as Europe’s best-selling car to the Renault 5, which has almost the same specs and price as the Tesla Model 2, which Musk scrapped to direct funds towards Robotaxis, was meant to have…

On that note, Tesla sales continue to crater to this day, largely because Musk’s political affiliations have destroyed the brand’s value. This has pushed Tesla’s profit margin down to near zero! In fact, as costs rise due to Robotaxi and Optimus development, there is a chance that Tesla will begin to post losses in the near future.

This isn’t a CEO who deserves a raise; it is one who deserves to be ousted.

So, why isn’t he being ousted? And why have shareholders handed him this utterly gargantuan pay package, with such flimsy conditions that a burnt Neuralink test monkey could meet them?

I can see two reasons.

Firstly, blackmail. Tesla’s board repeatedly warned that if this pay package didn’t pass, there was a serious chance Musk would leave Tesla. I say warned — that is a direct threat. Gary Black, a hedge fund manager who heavily backs Tesla, publicly stated that if Musk stepped down, Tesla’s stock could fall by 20% to 25%. However, I, and many others, believe this is a massive underestimation. My own analysis suggests that if Tesla were valued as a car company rather than based on Musk and his bullshit promises, as it would be if Musk left, it would lose closer to 90% of its value (read more here). Investors know this, so Musk’s threat to leave is more or less him saying, “Pay me all the money, or I will make your investment value collapse.”

You can’t consider a choice “free” if the only options are “Pay me money I don’t deserve or I will hurt you.”

And guess what, investors, big or small, don’t want to lose money. That is a damn good reason why many voted in favour. Needless to say, in many countries, Musk’s and the Tesla Board’s actions here would be seen as corporate extortion and would be wildly illegal.

But the second reason many voted in favour of the pay package is tied to why Tesla is worth so much more than it should be. Quite simply, Musk is a cult leader, and his followers are Tesla investors. He speaks exactly like a cult leader, constantly using internal coded language, thought-terminating clichés, and doublespeak, inducing shame and guilt in outsiders, and using isolating rhetoric. Like all cult leaders, he plays this off with a painfully bad charisma that comes across like the spelling mistakes in those Nigerian Prince emails — a way to filter out the rest and focus on the easy-to-manipulate, desperate people. Then, he sells his big, impossible ideas and waits for these people to invest (i.e., hand over their life savings) in him with the promise that he will make them wildly wealthy down the line. The world of Tesla investing is a cult; the only thing it is missing is the weird robes and sex rituals (presumably).

Sadly, institutions saw this ability and knew they could use it to make themselves a ton of money. They bought in, leaned into Musk’s cult and echoed Musk’s manipulations, pulling more followers in and increasing their investment’s value. That is why analysts like Dan Ives give nonsensical logic for their support of Musk’s ideas. They don’t believe what Musk is saying, but they know someone will, and if they buy in, their investment will go up.

This has caused the public and institutional investors to not look at Tesla logically. The only thing they ask is, “Is this going to bring more people into the cult?” Considering the $1 trillion propaganda line and the fact that the promises Musk is making are on a scale never seen before, most of them likely thought it would. After all, billions of people have been reading for months now about how Musk will be paid a trillion dollars to take over the world economy with robots. It doesn’t matter if that will actually happen, but whether it will spread enough fear, manipulation, and FOMO to bring people in.

Before I looked at the numbers, I thought the latter was closer to the truth. But after, I’m not so sure.

Musk’s pay packet won with 75% of the votes, with Musk’s 15.3% of the votes not counting. That sounds like a landslide, right? Well, it isn’t. Let me explain.

Institutional investors, such as mutual funds and investment banks, own 48.1% of Tesla, public retail investors own 36.3%, and insiders own 15.4% (which is mostly Elon’s 15.3% stake, so we can ignore them in this case).

Almost all institutional investors, such as Vanguard, JPMorgan, and BlackRock, backed Musk’s pay package. Tesla makes up a considerable portion of its investment portfolio and can’t risk it collapsing, so almost every single one voted yes purely because of the blackmail. If Musk left, the cult dissolved, and the public investors sold up, they would lose billions!

But only 84.7% of shares voted on this pay packet, meaning that this 48.1% bloc of investors made up 57% of the vote. So, Musk had won this vote before it had ever started.

That also means that of the 36.3% of Tesla shareholders who are publicly held, they voted almost perfectly 50% yes and 50% no. But here is the thing: Tesla’s public investors, of whom there are likely millions, seriously outnumber the few thousand institutional investors. So, if these votes weren’t weighted based on how much stock each person/organisation owned, this would have only just passed by the skin of its teeth!

This shows the cult of Elon is straining. It is being pushed to its limits, and major figures within its ranks were happy to risk losing it all rather than indulge Musk in his demented leadership. The institutional investors who went along with the blackmail will know this. They will know that another push like this could send the public investors, the actual members of the cult, scattering, sending the value of the investment to the floor.

So yes, 75% was a sizeable vote in favour of Musk. But when you consider the makeup of the voters, the cult of Elon, and the blackmail, that 25% no vote suddenly seems like an awfully significant resistance.

Okay, so what about Tesla’s future?

Well, this vote has done two things: severed Tesla’s last connection with reality and provided Musk with total authoritarian control.

As I have already mentioned, Musk shouldn’t be Tesla’s CEO, let alone be given this much wealth. But the fact that he was able to blackmail his own investors into bowing before him has effectively solidified him as the authoritarian leader of Tesla. No one can hold him to account now. He can do with Tesla what he likes.

This is a horrifically bad thing, because Musk is about to wheedle the last drop of reality from Tesla.

For the past few years, while Tesla transformed into the cult stock it is now, it still had to appear at least vaguely realistic. Its plans and technology had to at least theoretically be possible (if not a little moronic). This generated favourable coverage and attracted more people into the cult. As such, for the past six to seven years, Musk had straddled a fine line between outlandish, unrealistic claims to strengthen the cult and a more grounded approach to prevent the whole thing from collapsing.

But this vote wasn’t just about Musk’s pay but about the future direction of Tesla. The conditions Musk has to achieve to get this payday have more to do with self-driving AI and robots than making cars. So a yes vote was a vote for that direction. But, here is the thing: Tesla’s self-driving FSD system is demonstrably dead (read more here), as is Optimus (read more here). They will never work, let alone be a viable business, or even be a hyperscale business, as Musk claims they are. Anyone with even a drop of understanding or expertise in these fields can see that. They are not a realistic product and not a realistic way forward for Tesla. The only way they will generate growth is with hype, speculation, and expanding this cult.

As such, this vote was to force Tesla to entirely let go of reality. To indulge Musk in his demonstrably dangerous and unviable delusions, to value speculation and spectacle over material growth or fundamentals, and to enable Musk to cast out anyone who says otherwise.

There is only one problem with this plan: reality catches up to everyone eventually. And when reality comes for cult leaders, things get ugly. Do I need to ask you to Google the Jonestown Massacre?

I have said Tesla is dying for a long time now. But this is the final nail in the coffin. There is now nothing to stop Musk’s self-aggrandising psychosis. The few lifelines that Tesla and Musk’s sanity kept are being severed. Musk is going to push the entire company forward on a falsity, and no one can even ask him not to now, let alone hold him accountable for how reckless and damaging his actions will be. There was once a chance Tesla could turn itself around — to actually remain in the real world and succeed as the automotive giant it was on track to become. But not now. After this, there is no saving Tesla.

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Sources: CNBC, TOI, TechCrunch, BBC, Reuters, Capital.com, Will Lockett, Will Lockett