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Delaware judge strikes down Elon Musk's Tesla pay package for 2nd time
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
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That would be more than the entire market cap of Ford. Or VW, Honda, BMW, Hyundai, Stellantis, etc.
Truly preposterous.
How much profit would Tesla have to make on each car they ever sold to finance his package?
They actually do generate enough revenue in a year. Ignoring business expenses ofc. That would be the 15b figure below. Elon is quite literally asking for an amount that would be comparable to liquidating all of tesla, selling off every scrap.
Well it's stock options, not cash, so not as many as you may think.
People look at the number and nothing else.
Go back to when this pay package was crafted. The basic deal was, here's a King's ransom to do the impossible. Nobody ever thought that the performance targets required to trigger this payout were possible. Tesla achieved that. Elon and achieved that. And the stock continued to go up. Keep in mind, most of the money here is in stock not cash. So the 56 billion dollar number is only because the stock has continued to rise.
I say pay the man.
I'm glad your generation isn't getting laid, I'd hate for there to be more dumbasses that need to justify why a billionaire needs more billions.
I say hang the man.
on a ceiling fan for fun until there's a red streak across the wall in every direction, then make it a memorial to American workers.
His kind eats entire generations of wealth. He's an enemy to you and everything prosperity stands for. If Trump wants to start ejecting immigrants, he can start with that one.
I'm not 'justifying why a billionaire needs more billions'.
I'm saying that your personal opinion of Musk doesn't fucking matter. Neither does mine. What matters is facts. You may think he's an asshole, but if you can't objectively recognize that he's achieved a lot, if his current political misadventures must necessarily invalidate his past accomplishments and make him unworthy of any praise in your mind, then you're a small minded fool blinded by your own hatred.
Perhaps. But if it wasn't for Tesla, electric cars would still be '10 years away'. Do you deny that?
He is a Nepo baby manchild who bought his way into everything. He has a team of handlers who keep him from doing and saying shit so he won't fuck things up worse than he already has.
He spends his free time playing video games, twatting, and doing drugs. He ignores his twelve kids and pretends to be CEO of two companies while having involvement with five others.
He fucks his staff and threatens to sexually assault women for fun. Your opinion of him is so far from the truth one could only conclude you literally have no fucking clue or are surgically attached to his ass in order to swallow all his shit.
Actually I suspect I know more about him than you do.
I didn't know of him in the PayPal days. I did know of Tesla though. I was reading their blog as their then-CEO Martin Eberhard was trying to make the original Roadster into a reality. Eberhard was focused on a design that involved a two-speed gearbox, you could select gear 1 for more power or gear 2 for more range/higher speed, and switch between the two at any time (including while driving). The problem is, making a gearbox and synchromesh that will reliably shift under load at 16,000 RPM is tough. Making it last the life of the car, and be cheap enough to put in a car, is double-tough.
So I watched that blog as they tried for about two years, going through different transmission vendors and designs.
That was when I first heard of Elon. He was one of the initial founders of Tesla, one of the largest investors. And after a year or two he stepped in and started throwing his weight around. He pushed Eberhard out and stepped in as CEO. And his first choice was to dump the transmission entirely, focus on engineering a larger / more powerful / more efficient electric motor that could deliver good acceleration through a single-speed reduction gear.
That got the Roadster out the door.
Point is- while he may have stepped into the big chair like a bull in a china shop, he was right. He quickly identified the objectively correct engineering decisions and started Tesla on the right path.
Look at SpaceX. Elon basically built SpaceX from the ground up. Him and Tom Mueller (designer of the Merlin rocket engine) were the first two employees.
I'm not claiming he's a saint. I personally know people who have worked directly for him. Everyone inside and outside his companies agrees he's kind of an asshole sometimes and he rides his people absurdly hard with no concept of work life balance. And lately he's gone a bit off the rails with his politics.
But I am claiming, and I think objective history shows, that he is effective. Being an asshole doesn't invalidate that.
Wow, you have constructed quite the fantasy world for Muskrat. One where his is an innovator, hard but consistent, a mentor, a teacher, an imperfect vessel who is more good than bad.
Pardon me while I throw up. He is not actually CEO of two companies. That is not even possible. He is not also involved with five other companies, he doesn't have the time. He doesn't take care of his twelve kids and is on record already disowning his child like the piece of shit he is.
He does not know more about manufacturing than anyone else. He knows what he pays people to tell him. He is a charlatan and a conman by trade. He lies and says he will deliver on driverless taxis (one of his many lies) to drive up his stock. That is fucking fraud my friend.
He is instead a drug addict narcissist loser who pretends he knows shit but just borrows and buys all the advice he needs. A classic Nepo baby whose degenerative behavior runs in his family.
Twelve kids with three partners and probably a lot more he has paid to abort or threatened to silence. One thing we do know is he spends a lot of time trying to and fucking his employees.
If he was a saint he would the the saint of misinformation. He bought a company with other people's money and let them turn it into a propaganda outlet used to manipulate countries and subvert democracy.
Everyone says he is a raging asshole. His previous partners say they can't recognize him anymore.
You know what though? I am going to trust Sir Special Ed a Lot on this and start sucking Elon's butthole.
One thing no one can deny is he is one of the world's best modern con artists. Between what he has done to make a killing in crypto pseudo-legally and him dodging SEC violations like Neo from the Matrix is super impressive.
The best con artist would not have a third of the world realizing he is full of shit.
You are right about him getting away with fraud. It is apparent that it is nothing unusual though as every rich white man seems to get a free pass to break the law.
Actually the better con artist can have a ton of people know who he is and pull the same con over and over again, and he is doing that in spades. It's like he doesn't even need to hide it he is so good.
It is more a indictment of modern society as we have a lot of wealthy conartist including our new POTUS doing the same thing. You only have to look at examples like the pillow guy to see just about anyone can make it big with the right connections.
So is he really good or is the environment just bad and allows these charlatans to operate with impunity. I definitely lean towards the later.
You betray your own ignorance. It's absolutely possible to be CEO of multiple companies. Ask any entrepreneur- a great many of them are running multiple businesses.
If you want to argue that it's not possible to be a GOOD ATTENTIVE CEO of multiple companies because there's not enough hours in the day, that's valid and a lot of people have criticized him for that.
I'm sure he gives them lots of money. But in terms of real time- I doubt he spends much time being a dad because he simply doesn't give himself the time to spend. I'm sure his kids get like an hour or two a week or something.
Why, because he smoked a joint on a podcast? I get that you hate him but when you make criticisms like this you betray your own position, that you're striking out because you hate him not because you have valid criticisms. It takes away from your actual criticisms (some of which are valid).
I never said he wasn't. In fact I personally know multiple people who have worked almost directly for him. They quit because in Elon world there's no work life balance there's just the work and you're expected to devote all your time to it like he does.
I'd probably never want to work for him. From what I hear, he is quite an asshole sometimes especially to his employees. That doesn't mean he's never done anything good, or that he's incapable of good.
Few things in life are black and white. Most are shades of gray.
The average CEO works 60+ hours a week. He is not CEO of two companies. Listen, Elon could give you the title of best dick sucker in the world but it really just means you want to suck his dick. Titles without the actual work are bullshit
Oh so glad he gives his kids money. That is what life is all about amiriiight? Stop making excuses for the fact that he is a shit dad who has already disowned his own kids.
The fact that Elon is a drug addict is well known. It really just shows you don't know what the fuck your talking about.
https://www.wsj.com/business/elon-musk-illegal-drugs-e826a9e1
Stop pretending you know anything about Musky because every time you open your mouth you just come across as a fanboi apologist. It is pretty pathetic.
You're moving the conversation off-topic, ceo-salary is out of control and this "paypackage" is ridiculous.
CEO salary is in most cases out of control. But you're ignoring that most of this compensation is in stock. The only reason it's worth so much today is because Tesla stock went up so much. It wasn't worth nearly as much when the package was signed.
Yes, because Electric-car and self-driving aren't a combo deal.
Every Tesla runs on the same battery they did before there were Teslas, hundreds of 18650s, and golf carts had regen braking.
If it seems like a lot of our progress is just smoke and mirrors, it mostly is.
18650's existed. But nobody was putting them in cars. All the prototype cars automakers were showing off used large format pouch cells. These had various issues with heat and longevity and safety and thermal expansion. Using 18650's in a car was a Tesla invention.
Teslas today no longer use 18650s, they use 2170s and 4680s, both cell formats brought into mainstream by Tesla.
The bigger issue is nobody was building electric cars!! All the pieces of tech existed but nobody was bothering to put them together. A big part of Tesla's mission (which they accomplished) was basically to embarrass mainstream automakers into building EVs. That's worked.
That's what I credit Tesla/Elon with doing- actually building a damn EV and selling it.
Martin Eberhard et al built Tesla. They hacked a ~~Porsche~~ Lotus Elise apart and used laptop cells to make it scary fast, and inexpensive. Musk never founded the company, nor did he contribute to the engineering in a meaningful way.
Melon isn't an engineer, he's a fuckin dead weight clown who is damn good at convincing people he matters.
Lotus Elise
Primarily, yes.
I can't find it now, but there was a talk with Eberhard about doing a lot of initial work on a salvaged 911.. can't find the source though, so never mind.
I was literally watching it happen.
Musk, Eberhard, and a few others came together to build an electric sports car. The only reason Musk isn't listed as a 'founder' is because one of them already had an LLC registered and it saved them some paperwork to reuse that.
I understand you dislike him and that's fine, but calling him names just makes you look like an uneducated buffoon.
Your uneducated opinion is observed and discarded.
What does a thoroughly inane statement like "watching it happen" mean to you?
Closely following the company during that time period and their various development efforts.
Watching Eberhard repeatedly go down the tech tree of a gearbox, and having it repeatedly fail. Switching designs, switching manufacturers, two or three times doing this and ending up with a result that would not be reliable.
Then Elon steps in with an obvious, simple solution of just put a single gear and a larger electric motor and suddenly development moves forward.
I also note with interest that nobody of any real acclaim wanted to work with Eberhard after he left Tesla. Ex Tesla employees are generally in high regard, Eberhard was not.
I enjoy your calmly delivered flimflam.
Such as: having direct visibility into the proprietary developments that are negative to the company in its infancy.
That musky actually understands why use of a 'bigger motor' would solve the problems associated with gearboxes. For that matter, that you understand the technical choices made in the matter are funny as well.
What kind of motors were picked, and why? I further love that your messiah still went for a gearbox design in the earlier model s that failed very very loudly as they drive around.
You've helped further cement how embarrassing his engineering skills are to professional mechanical engineers in the midst of your proselytizing.
I'd say Tesla and other companies are succeeding in spite of, not because of, musky. Cheerio.
You've proven yourself uneducated and closed-minded. I'm not saying that because we disagree, I'm saying that because you are asserting a position without evidence and an ad hominem attack (making fun of me personally rather than attacking the position I have).
For example- a bigger motor solves the problem of shifting by removing the shifter. Eberhard was hung up on the shifting problem for over a year, let that issue stall Tesla's development. You don't have to be an engineering genius or pro-Musk to read the history on that. And I was literally watching it happen- reading the Tesla blog where they were talking about the engineering problems with making the gearbox shift at high RPM and switching from one design to another, one supplier to another, etc.
You don't have to be a professional engineer or pro-Musk to understand the logic behind 'the best part is no part'.
And you don't have to be an auto expert or pro-Musk to see that most automakers were stuck in a constant '10 years away' cycle of EVs. You just have to follow a little history or be alive longer than Tesla (that's not an age insult, just pointing out that for automakers EVs were essentially a pipe dream. For reference watch "Who killed the electric car?").
I'd encourage you to open your mind, set aside your personal political biases and recognize that there are few absolute black and white / angels or devils in the world. Good people are imperfect, bad people sometimes do good things. Taking an 'absolutist' view on almost any issue leaves you blind to the nuance of the world and that leaves you uninformed.
Best of luck.
Yawn. Hello ad hominem, early on. Lots of unnecessary verbiage.
The rest of your argument is both trite & false, and again reveals a lack of engineering prowess/understanding. It's not always intuitive, so I don't blame you much. Quick example: gears add contact friction, but also significantly reduce bearing loads on the motors, among other things. You trade some efficiency for better lifetimes on the parts experiencing the most pressure. Further, Teslas still have a gearbox, and even as a single stage system, they still experience failures. "No part" eh?
If there was anything to learn from reading a carefully manicured blog where honesty isn't guaranteed, it's that there wasn't enough of a commitment to getting it right, iterating takes time, which is still why I won't buy one of those styrofoam-padded shitboxes. Still buying an EV, just one that was actually well designed.
That you feel attacked by my laughing at your conclusions, well... Cry about it.
I don't feel attacked. You're just another internet person. I'm concerned that there's an awful lot of people like you these days, who take some position and then mock anyone who disagrees. It shows a serious lack of critical thinking.
Quite true. Electric motors want high RPM, so you NEED a reduction gear to turn a motor's high-RPM output into a car's low-RPM wheel rotation speed.
But the problem isn't gears, the problem is SHIFTING. At highway speed an electric motor can be going at 15,000-20,000 RPM and is quite happy in that situation. A gearbox is too. But SHIFTING at that speed, even with a synchromesh, puts extreme stress on the system. THAT is the problem. Eberhard was focused on getting shifting to work, and for over a year was trying various designs of two-speed shifting gearbox from various manufacturers. This wasn't something that existed, that anybody had bothered to design. And Tesla had working specimens, they just didn't last long at all because the extreme stress of shifting at highway speed would shred the gears. Eberhard was letting that technical problem hold up delivery of the car.
Elon then said 'scrap the shifting, put a simple one speed reduction gear and increase the motor torque to provide whatever we lose by not having a 1st gear'. And I'd say that is objectively the correct answer, proven by the fact that now EVERY EV from EVERY automaker uses that design.
Oh, just lol. I can see the nuances of the engineering choices aren't getting through here.
That very choice is a critical part of why there aren't many cheap EVs on the market. If you'll recall, Eberhard was trying to keep costs down so that ordinary folks could afford the vehicle. Smaller motor plus gearbox costs less and reduces other costs as well. Elon changed the engineering goals, forcing the roadster to be priced yet higher.
A large, custom motor "solves" the problem inelegantly by replacing an undersized mallet with a sledge, as you'd expect from a moron. Correspondingly larger IGBTs, larger switching losses, more battery capacity lost to needing to parallel vs series for feeding the larger motor a lot of current. There were and yet remain many downstream negatives to that decision.
As for the rest of the market following, why are you surprised that the same market which kept saying "10yrs away" also couldn't be imaginative enough to innovate?
It's obvious you don't want to shift from your position either, the funny bit is that at least one of us here has evaluated merits vs problems with any technical background. Keep on drinking that corporate Kool aid.
A larger motor solves the problem of mechanical wear by replacing mechanical components with solid state ones. Yes you need bigger IGBTs, bigger current handling capacity starting at the cell level, parts must be stronger to handle more torque, etc. There are downsides.
But in almost all engineering situations, it's well understood that replacing mechanical components with solid state ones is almost always the right call and leads to better reliability / durability. I can think of MANY situations where the evolution of a product went from mechanical to solid state (with quality and reliability increasing as a result), I can't think of any situations where a solid state system was replaced with a mechanical system and it ended up being better or cheaper.
My mind is open though, feel free to provide some examples.
What I recall was the plan from the beginning was always that Roadster would be an expensive ~$150k+ rich people toy that would finance development of the $80k luxury car that would finance development of the $30k car for everyone. I don't remember anyone talking about 'ordinary folks' driving a Roadster.
I remember many journalists were allowed to drive early versions of the car, but locked in 2nd gear.
If you want to argue that there was a negative trickle down effect- that starting with Roadster, sizing the motor and power handling for extreme accel led to higher costs, it's a valid argument but I personally disagree.
I think a more valid argument is that putting such extreme accel in a car set an extremely high standard and it became expected that an EV would be quick off the line. Whereas, an EV that has 'normal gas engine accel' (say 0-60 in 6-8 seconds) could use smaller motors, smaller IGBTs, smaller wiring, etc and thus cost less but wouldn't sell as well since Tesla set the bar so high. That's a valid argument.
Personally I don't agree- I drive a Tesla Model Y long range, and the rapid acceleration is one of my favorite features of the car. Other than just being fun, it means there's never a question of 'can I accelerate fast enough to turn in front of that guy?' or 'do I have space to pass this person?'.
I also note that mainstream automakers were focused on large format pouch cells for their battery packs, which suffered issues of thermal expansion and containing a runaway reaction. Tesla used a couple crates of 18650s and coddled them, and in time 'large number of small cells' became the industry standard.
I also note that other automakers are now talking about 'shifting' EVs but they're simulating the effect with motor control tricks and a speaker that plays fake engine noise. You could say big auto had no imagination 10-20 years ago, but now EVs are going mainstream and that excuse no longer holds up. If an automaker is going to the trouble of making a fake electronic 'transmission', why wouldn't they just put a real transmission and a smaller motor / smaller power handling system?
I'd argue because even without a need for extreme accel, the big mechanical transmission costs more in cost and weight than the larger motor and power system would.
No, it doesn't solve the wear problem, that's precisely my point. It moves it, and at a monetary cost.
Easy example of adding complexity to help meet a goal, geared turbofan engines. Simplicity and reduced short term cost? Antithetical. Long term costs thanks to efficiency savings? In spades.
I still see parroting of seeming truisms versus actual understanding on choices made, based on changes observed since the 70s onward. "Solid state always beats mechanical", for instance, something that _seemed_obvious in the 70s and 80s. This makes you out to be around what, 55 is my guess.
The tribal knowledge of implementation details have changed since the solid state revolution, some applications of solid state are still past the edge of solid state capabilities if your goal is cost reduction. That was Eberhard's intent, and what a geared motor would help solve, never mind the expected initially high costs.
How/what kind of motor is built dictates its favored unloaded RPM, haven't you seen exposed A/C motors spinning fans for e.g. pumps or Aircon condensors? 20k rpm as an argument?? Jesus. I read between the lines and see your actual understanding of the matters.
So listen, I'm not interested in converting a zealot. I personally also believe solid state is the way to go for controls and other parts of a system, but the difference between a junior and experienced engineer when it comes to production at international consumption levels is knowing what tools are appropriate, and where, in that system. A lot of the rest of your argument text is a red herring, I encourage you to reread it and discard it as I have.
perhaps, but irrelevant.