Tesla investors currently have the chance to vote on a number of proposals for the company’s upcoming shareholder’s meeting, with CEO Elon Musk’s 2018 pay package hanging in the balance after it was struck down by a Delaware judge. In recent weeks, a number of Teslarati readers have shared how they voted or plan to vote on the proposal, with about a month left to go until the meeting.
After Delaware Judge Kathaleen McCormick voided the previously approved $56 billion pay package for Musk in January, both Musk and the company have appealed the decision, and the board of directors has launched a vote on ratifying the package for the stockholder’s meeting next month. Voting has been open for the past few weeks, and following our recent story detailing one of Tesla’s largest shareholders as he criticized Musk and suggested voting “no” on the measure, many have said they voted in favor of the proposal.
Tesla also launched a website dedicated to explaining how shareholders can vote, and detailing the board’s voting recommendations. Crucially, the board has recommended “yes” votes on both proposals three and four, which concern Tesla’s potential move to re-incorporate in Texas instead of Delaware, and the pay package vote for Musk, respectively.
The annual shareholder’s meeting will be held on June 13, and shareholders can continue to vote on the proposals between now and then. Tesla has also shared a video on social media encouraging investors to vote in favor of this, and the company’s incorporation move from Delaware to Texas.
We have put forward two especially important proposals for our Annual Meeting of Stockholders—and we need your vote.
Protect your rights as stockholders & protect the value of your investment by voting FOR the ratification of the 2018 CEO Performance Award & FOR Reincorporating… pic.twitter.com/ONmB7oZfyM
— Tesla (@Tesla) May 20, 2024
How Teslarati readers are voting on Musk’s 2018 pay package (so far)
Following our recent stories, 88 respondents have reached out and told us how they were voting, or planned to vote, on proposal three regarding Musk’s previously approved pay package. Of them, about 66 percent said they had voted or would vote in favor of ratifying Musk’s 2018 compensation plan, while around 30 percent said they voted or would vote against it. The remaining respondents, representing just over 3 percent, said that they were still undecided on the vote.
Those who responded varied in their number of shares; while most did not include how many shares they were voting for, others ranged from having just a few shares to over 7,000 shares.
To be sure, this is an extremely small sample size, especially given the sheer number of shareholders and Tesla shares out there. This also does not take into consideration the number of shares owned by each respondent, though it gives a small overview of how individual Tesla shareholders (who took the time to respond to recent stories) voted on proposal three. In addition, shareholders still have a few weeks left to cast their votes, and many could still be mulling over their vote on the proposal.
The board explains its recommendation for shareholders to vote “yes” by citing the fact that Musk already performed the work needed to earn the previously approved pay package. Some have noted that the CEO isn’t currently being paid for his past several years with the company, as a result of the package being struck down. Others have criticized Musk and Tesla for recent layoffs and his sharing of political views, which they say is why they would vote “no” on the proposal.
“Elon has not been paid for any of his work for Tesla for the past six years… That strikes us, and the many stockholders from whom we already have heard, as fundamentally unfair,” wrote Board Chair Robyn Denholm on the subject last month.
“We do not think that what the Delaware Court said is how corporate law should or does work. If it is legally advisable, we suggest simply subjecting the original 2018 package to a new shareholder vote.”
Musk also defended his pay package following the January decision, as well as his hopes for more voting control amidst the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) products.
Note: This article will be updated periodically up until Tesla’s Annual Stockholder Meeting on June 13. Last updated 6/4/24.
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What are your thoughts? Have you voted on proposal three of the upcoming meeting, and if so, how did you vote? Let me know at zach@teslarati.com, find me on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send us tips at tips@teslarati.com.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk just set a condition that could end Falcon 9 as we know it
Elon Musk says SpaceX will finally retire Falcon 9 once Starship flies reliably every week.
Elon Musk gave the clearest timeline yet for retiring Falcon 9, SpaceX’s workhorse rocket.
The comment came in a reply on X, where Musk wrote that “once Starship is flying reliably several times per week, it makes sense to shift super scarce SpaceX engineering and production resources to Starship to get launch rate to several times per day, which means winding down Falcon.” He was responding to physicist Casey Handmer, who noted that NASA is reportedly uneasy about SpaceX phasing out Falcon after building what Handmer called the most successful launcher ever, with the fleet nearing 1,000 total launches.
Now @SciGuySpace reports NASA is in a tizzy because after running the most successful launcher ever for more than a decade and nearing 1000 launches, @SpaceX is planning to retire Falcon in favor of Starship in a few years.
Sorry, NASA, you’ve had 15 years to burn down the… https://t.co/uCNoMwK0v9
— Casey Handmer (@CJHandmer) August 22, 2026
Falcon 9 is still SpaceX’s busiest vehicle by far. The company is on pace for roughly 140 to 145 Falcon flights this year, following 165 in 2025, president Gwynne Shotwell told Time earlier in 2026. She has already said Falcon flights would “tail off” as Starship comes online, while reports indicate that SpaceX has stopped booking new Falcon 9 launches past 2028 and halted production of some expendable Falcon hardware, according to Bloomberg.
It’s worth noting that Musk’s post is a condition, and not a countdown on when Falcon will retire. Starship has not yet flown weekly, let alone daily. Its most recent flight in July ended with a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, a milestone Musk pointed to earlier this month when he said the vehicle’s heat shield problem was effectively solved. SpaceX towed that ship to Christmas Island for inspection, and the next flight, Flight 14, is aimed at putting Starship into orbit for the first time. A tower catch attempt for the upper stage has been pushed back to what Musk has called “a few months” away.
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The gap between Falcon’s role today and Starship’s promised role tomorrow matters most to NASA. Falcon and its Dragon capsule remain the only way the agency rotates astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and Starship is not certified to carry NASA crews. Musk’s post did not address how that handoff would work if Falcon winds down before a crew-rated Starship variant exists. The timing lines up with Musk’s other recent Starship comments. Two days before the Falcon post, he told a different X user that SpaceX is aiming for more than 30 Starship launches a day by 2030, or roughly 10,000 a year, a figure tied to the Trump administration’s new push for higher national launch cadence. Falcon, which took over a decade to reach its first 100 launches, was never built to approach that kind of volume.
For now, Falcon 9 keeps flying at a near-record pace while Starship works to prove it can do the job Musk has already picked out for it.
Tesla Cybercab is set to launch in Austin, Texas, on September 3, as the company has officially started sending out invitations to a dedicated event it will hold in the city where its headquarters is located.
The Cybercab is Tesla’s dedicated ride-sharing vehicle: it features just two seats and has no steering wheel or pedals. It is aimed at fully autonomous passenger transport, and will operate in the Robotaxi fleet alongside the Tesla Model Y, which has been performing driverless rides for real-world passengers for more than a year.
Thank you so much @Tesla for inviting us to the Cybercab launch in Austin! 🤠 pic.twitter.com/F1rAR8zd5O
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 22, 2026
The launch of the Cybercab marks the next chapter in Tesla’s autonomy story. The company has been developing autonomous transport for years with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) platform, which is available in any vehicle the company has built with the proper hardware and software capabilities.
Its capabilities vary by hardware and software version, but Tesla says its latest hardware version, known as AI4, can deliver full autonomy. However, future vehicles will operate with even more robust hardware packages, as Tesla will develop AI4.5 and AI5 for even more capability in its vehicles.
Following a report from The Information that surfaced earlier this week, the writing was on the wall that Tesla was set to launch Cybercab in the near term. The report stated Tesla could launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Tesla came close and has booked it for September 3.
The big thing with this event being scheduled is not necessarily that Tesla is launching a new vehicle, but instead that it is launching a vehicle that has no steering wheel or pedals and will operate exclusively on a self-driving program that is evidently nearing full autonomy. If the event allows vehicles to take passengers on public roads and drop them off wherever they please within the City of Austin, it will be a drastic advancement in the company’s self-driving story.
People have ridden in Cybercab previously: Tesla had the “We, Robot” event in October 2024, which allowed people to experience fully autonomous rides in a closed circuit at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.
🚨 Ride in a Tesla Cybercab with us
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) May 11, 2025
Additionally, Tesla launched employee rides in Cybercab in July.
It’s a drastic step forward for Tesla, whose CEO, Elon Musk, has promised for years that the company would release a fully autonomous vehicle and platform capable of allowing drivers to relinquish any responsibility behind the wheel.
Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year.
The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded, “We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized. Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!”
We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized.
Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2026
That figure is specific to Starship, the rocket SpaceX is still developing for orbital and lunar missions, not the Falcon 9 fleet that carries most of the company’s current launch volume. Starship has flown twice this year, a slower pace than the four and five flights SpaceX managed in 2024 and 2025. Getting from two flights a year to 30 a day is the scale of jump the new federal policy is meant to clear regulatory room for.
Trump’s memo, signed Thursday, directs agencies to identify new launch and reentry sites on federal land, including a new reentry site within 90 days, and to speed up the permitting and environmental reviews that have long slowed cadence growth. It also sets a goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and placing initial lunar base elements by 2030, tying the launch buildout directly to NASA’s Artemis program.
SpaceX has already been pushing the FAA toward higher numbers on its own. The agency approved up to 44 annual Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in February, on top of a 2024 review that raised the cap at Starbase in Texas to 25 a year. Those approvals cover a fraction of the 10,000 annual flights Musk is now describing, which shows how far current permitting still sits from the administration’s stated target.
The near-term test of all this is more modest. SpaceX cleared a full-duration, six-engine static fire on its next Starship vehicle this week, the last major hardware checkpoint before Flight 14, which is targeting no earlier than August 28 and is expected to attempt the vehicle’s first full orbital mission. Musk said last week that a tower catch of the upper stage is still probably months away, a reminder that the immediate roadmap remains far more incremental than the daily launch numbers he just posted.
Elon Musk just set a condition that could end Falcon 9 as we know it
Tesla will launch Cybercab on September 3
