Back in 2018, Elon Musk and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) proposed a compensation plan that was just about as insane as the vehicles that the company produces. Dubbed as one of the most radical CEO payment plans in corporate history, it required Musk to hit a series of market cap and operational targets before he is compensated. If he succeeds, he is paid heartily, making him one of the wealthiest persons in the world by net worth. If he fails, he gets nothing.
“If all that happens over the next ten years is that Tesla’s value grows by 80 or 90%, then my amount of compensation would be zero,” Elon Musk said, describing his payment plan to The New York Times.
A dozen Market cap targets were set, each $50 billion more than the next, starting at $100 billion and so on. Revenue and adjusted profit goals were also established. For each tranche that is achieved, Elon Musk would have the option to purchase about 1% of Tesla stock at $70 per share. Considering that Tesla’s market cap only stood at $59 billion then, the ambitious compensation plan was dubbed as laughably impossible by critics.
“Mr. Musk’s critics — and there are many — are likely to contend that the new compensation plan is just the company’s latest publicity stunt. He has been called a modern-day P.T. Barnum who has created the illusion of success while consistently missing production estimates. The company continues to lose money; at one point last year, it was losing almost a half-million dollars an hour… Jim Chanos, a short-seller who has bet against Tesla’s shares — and has thus far been on the losing side of that trade — has contended that Tesla is worthless,” the NYT wrote then.
That was just over three years ago.
In a securities filing last Friday, Tesla noted that Elon Musk had achieved 6 of his 12 operating targets, and two more were probable soon. A good number of these targets reflected an adjusted version of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Two others represented revenue targets. As noted in a report from The Wall Street Journal, Tesla had also reached 11 of Elon Musk’s 12 market cap targets.
This is incredibly impressive considering that Musk’s 10-year performance award is only in its third year. The long-term plan was designed for a 10-year period, and even Musk, in a statement to the NYT, spoke of a decade-long timeframe when he described his performance award. “I actually see the potential for Tesla to become a trillion-dollar company within a 10-year period,” he said.
While his net worth will radically increase due to his Tesla performance award, Musk could not simply sell his shares and disappear. Under the terms of his payment arrangement, even once his TSLA shares vest, Musk would have to hold them for an additional five years before he is even allowed to sell them. And as per Elon Musk’s previous statements, this is something that he does not intend to do.
Musk’s 10-year Tesla performance award is arguably one of the most shareholder-friendly executive payment plans in the market. Other companies typically install outsize packages that often come at the expense of shareholders because executives are compensated even if they underperform. Tesla’s all-or-nothing plan for Elon Musk, on the other hand, greatly benefits shareholders as their holdings will increase in value as Tesla hits its market cap goals. This is great for long-term shareholders who hold the stock, as well as Tesla employees, as they receive TSLA shares when they are employed by the company.
At the end of December, Elon Musk owned about 22.4% of TSLA’s outstanding shares, up from 20.8% a year earlier. Tesla also has a market cap of $683.42 billion as of Friday’s close.
Disclaimer: I am long TSLA.
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Tesla revealed a major new Cybercab detail in a guide it released for First Responders, showing new territory in its beliefs and intentions for the ride-hailing-focused vehicle that entered production in April.
The First Responders Guide is released to give fire departments, paramedics, and other emergency personnel the proper guidance on what to do in the event of an accident, entrapment, or other situation that would require immediate attention.
On one of the pages of the First Responders Guide, Tesla revealed a stark detail about the Cybercab, which could help personnel enter the vehicle more easily in case of an emergency.
Tesla Cybercab has one important piece that AI4 cars might need for FSD
It shows Tesla has no intention of releasing any Cybercab units that were initially proposed for ride-hailing services for the general public with any manual controls, meaning a steering wheel or pedals:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or acceleration and brake pedals.”
New official Cybercab documentation from Tesla:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or… https://t.co/P6ut1mZyzr pic.twitter.com/yq6skl9s2J
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 27, 2026
This is a major development for those who continue to believe Tesla planned to release the Cybercab with any sort of manual controls so that passengers could take over if needed. However, when Tesla started manufacturing production versions of the Cybercab in Giga Texas earlier this year, they were spotted without a steering wheel or pedals.
It essentially confirms the company has no intentions of bringing manual controls to the car’s production versions. Some have argued that the likelihood of Tesla having something
There still are some Cybercab units out there with a steering wheel and pedals, and as Tesla said, these cars are engineering or test vehicles, which have Safety Monitors on board to help the car out of a precarious situation or emergency.
Tesla released the Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite to owners of Hardware 3 or AI3 vehicles today, adding several new features to the vehicles that were once believed to be capable of unsupervised self-driving.
Now, Tesla has released this modified suite to older Tesla vehicles, adding plenty of new features and capabilities.
Here are the full release notes for the suite:
- Distilled the intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3. This allows HW3 to directly learn how to handle scenarios using HW4 V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to HW4 including Reinforcement Learning (RL) and offline models for HW3.
- Improved both proactive and reactive responsiveness across a wide variety of categories including navigation handling, merges and forks, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights, and vehicle cut-in scenarios.
- Improved general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering and more consistent lane centering.
- Introduced parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, or at the Curbside.
- Speed Profiles are now available at all times, to further customize driving style preference.
These improvements, according to Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, help distill the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of AI3.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
He added:
“It includes destination options and speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly significantly improved safety. We hope you’ll enjoy it, once the build ships wide.”
FSD v14 Lite is now rolling out to AI3 early-access customers. Based on the feedback, will rollout to more customers over the next few weeks.
This build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute config of AI3. It includes destination…
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 29, 2026
Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.
Tesla has finally released its Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite for older cars that equip the Hardware 3 or AI 3 chip, which have not been able to handle the newest versions of the company’s driver assistance software.
Tesla officially started releasing the v14 Lite suite to owners in the Early Access Program last night. The company’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said that the rollout will continue over the next few weeks. The build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of an AI3 car.
🚨 Tesla is releasing v14 Lite for AI3 owners who are in early-access
This will give AI3 cars the ability to experience new FSD features like parking preferences. https://t.co/pp6Q5FOKoz pic.twitter.com/tqexMB8SVy
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 29, 2026
It also includes a variety of new features that were available to AI4 cars running v14, including:
- Start Self-Driving from Park
- Arrival and Parking Options
- Speed Profiles
The release is highly anticipated because those owners with AI3 vehicles were early adopters into the FSD platform and were promised that their cars would be capable of achieving Full Self-Driving.
However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted during the company’s recent Q1 Earnings Call that these vehicles would not be capable of achieving unsupervised Full Self-Driving, which is what Tesla had originally said.
Owners were not pleased with this answer, or the idea that their commitment to buying the suite outright for thousands of dollars would not yield the ability to drive without operating the car. Tesla gave some solutions for this, including a discount on a new car, or an upgrade to an AI4 or AI5 self-driving computer and new, upgraded cameras.
Tesla owners do not seem pleased with these options, as they require giving the company more money.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that Tesla came through for owners here by releasing v14 Lite before the end of Q2, something it had promised owners during the previous Earnings Call. Tesla has had trouble keeping up with timelines, but this is a big achievement for the team.
Tesla reveals huge Cybercab detail in new guide for First Responders
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
