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Investor's Corner

Tesla shareholders urged to remove Elon Musk over 10-year comp plan, Twitter use

Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveils futuristic Cybertruck in Los Angeles, Nov. 21, 2019 (Credit: Teslarati)

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Pensions and Investment Research Consultants (Pirc), which hails as one of the largest pension representation and lobby groups in the UK, is urging Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) shareholders to remove Elon Musk over his 10-year CEO performance award and his Twitter behavior. According to Pirc, Musk’s compensation plan, which could net a record $55.8 billion payout, “unfairly riches the chief executive.”

In a recommendation on Tuesday, Pirc alleged that Tesla’s “Board, including CEO Elon Musk, awarded themselves excessive compensation packages over a three-year period that allegedly allowed directors to ‘enrich themselves at the company’s expense.’” The shareholder adviser also called on investors to vote against Musk’s re-election to Tesla’s board due to the deal, as it posed a “serious risk of reputational harm to the company and its shareholders.”

Apart from Musk’s 10-year performance award, Pirc also took issue with the CEO’s use of Twitter, which has resulted in conflicts with regulators in the past. The investor adviser stated that Musk’s antics in the social media platform had cost Tesla millions of dollars worth of settlements, thus representing an “unnecessary reputational risk to the company.” Pirc brought up Musk’s conflict with the SEC in 2018, which resulted in a total fine of $40 million from the CEO and Tesla. 

Elon Musk’s 10-year Performance Award. (Credit: Tesla)

The investor adviser noted that the incident prompted “accusations of stock market abuse, with the SEC alleging that Musk had lied to investors.” Pirc also cited Musk’s controversial stance on the coronavirus, though the firm incorrectly stated that Tesla had urged employees to return to work “without sufficient precautions/protections and despite protests from workers.”

This, of course, is inaccurate, as Tesla has had experience with the pandemic in its Gigafactory Shanghai facility in China even before its Fremont plant was closed down. The company also followed an extensive Return to Work Playbook that outlined initiatives that would protect workers who are returning to work. Pirc further neglected to mention that Tesla’s reopening of the Fremont plant was supported by entities such as the Bay Area Council, the Mayor of Fremont, US Vice President Mike Pence, US President Donald Trump, and even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 

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Apart from its grievances against Musk, Pirc is urging Tesla shareholders to vote against re-electing Robyn Denholm as the company’s Chair of the Board. Denholm succeeded Musk as Tesla’s Chair following the latter’s settlement with the SEC in 2018. 

The Fremont factory. (Credit: Tesla)

Interestingly, Pirc also neglected to mention that Musk’s 10-year performance award is tied directly to Tesla’s performance and market cap. This means that unless the company is doing well, Musk receives nothing. Thus, Musk only nets his major payouts when Tesla investors also experience major gains due to the company’s performance. 

Elon Musk’s tenure as CEO of Tesla may be marked by several controversies, but there is no doubt that the electric car maker has flourished under his leadership. Since its IPO in 2010, and despite its trademark volatility and attacks from short sellers, TSLA stock has earned investors 5,677% since it debuted at $17 per share ten years ago. Overall, Tesla has earned its investors 45% per year on average, which is impressive for a company selling vehicles that were once thought of as glorified golf carts. 

Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.

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Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”

Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.

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Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.

While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure

The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.

Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet

Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.

Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.

As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.

Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla Full Self-Driving hits Level 4? One analyst says yes

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is currently listed as a Level 2 suite in terms of its passenger cars. As its Robotaxi platform continues to move quickly, it has been recognized as a Level 4 ride-sharing program by the State of Texas, as Tesla recently self-certified itself.

However, a Wall Street analyst is arguing that Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has effectively achieved Level 4 autonomy in most conditions in all of its vehicles, drawing on personal experience and data released by the company.

Alex Potter of Piper Sandler said in a note to investors on Wednesday that “Tesla has solved the self-driving puzzle,” pointing to decisions to offer insurance discounts for FSD-enabled policies as a signal of confidence, which is backed up by stellar safety records compared to human driving.

Investing.com initially reported on Potter’s new note.

Additionally, Potter looks at the recent start of Cybercab production at Giga Texas as a potential indication that Tesla is ready to offer some level of unsupervised driving at least in the near future. The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals, completely eliminating the ability for human input.

He also sees Tesla’s allocation of “several hundred million USD (if not $1B+)” as confidence internally, seeing as it would be tough to set aside that amount of capital toward a project that the company does not see as relatively near-term.

Forward thinking, especially as Cybercab has no human controls, it would make sense that Tesla is at least close to self-driving. How close is another question.

Tesla has routinely teased that unsupervised FSD is close, but there are still a lot of things it feels as if the company has to roll out some more capability, including unsupervised parking features, known as “Banish,” better operation with regional self-driving performance, and other improvements.

That is not to say that Tesla FSD is super impressive already. It has already completed coast-to-coast drives across the United States and Canada, it routinely takes the stress out of driving for most people, and it has proven through Tesla Safety Reports that it is safer and involved in accidents less frequently than humans.

Even Potter believes it is capable, as he used it to go from Missoula, Montana, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, back in April.

“There’s no substitute for personal experience,” he wrote.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla just did something in South Korea that no foreign carmaker has ever done

Tesla’s Model Y just became South Korea’s best-selling car, beating every domestic model in May.

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Tesla did something last month that no foreign car has ever done in South Korea by outselling every vehicle in the country, domestic or imported, finishing the month with Model Y as the single best-selling car across the entire Korean market. According to data from the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association released on June 4, the Model Y recorded 8,762 units sold in May, pushing the Kia Sorento into second place at 7,836 units and the Hyundai Grandeur into third at 5,183 units. It is the first time an imported vehicle has outsold every domestic model on a single-month basis.

Tesla imported 10,866 cars into South Korea in May, making it the top import brand for the fourth consecutive month. BMW followed at 6,555 units, less than two-thirds of Tesla’s total, while BYD registered just 1,032 units. The combined domestic sales of GM Korea, Renault Korea, and KG Mobility last month totaled just 7,019 units, meaning a single Tesla model outsold three Korean automakers combined.

Tesla FSD earns high praise in South Korea’s real-world autonomous driving test

 

South Korea has historically been one of the hardest markets for foreign automakers to crack. Hyundai and Kia together control close to 70% of the overall market and carry deep consumer loyalty built over decades. Tesla’s path into this market was an uphill battle due to high import duties, limited service infrastructure, and early skepticism about charging networks. In 2024, the Model Y was the best-selling imported car in South Korea with 18,717 units for the full year. By 2025, after the Juniper refresh, it cleared 50,000 units and took the top spot among all EVs.

Year to date, Tesla has a 250.8% increase in the country over the same period last year, and now holds a 30.8% share of the entire imported car segment for 2026. EVs as a category represented 48.6% of all imported passenger car registrations in May. As Teslarati has reported, the Juniper refresh brought meaningful improvements to range, interior quality, and ride refinement that addressed the most common criticisms of earlier Model Y versions. Those upgrades appear to be resonating in markets like South Korea where buyers compare Tesla directly against high end domestic competitors.

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