4 ms·

Elon Musk threatens to leave Tesla if he doesn't get his ridiculous pay

21 points by breve 1y ago

Peacefulz 1y ago
These numbers are honestly ridiculous. I don't even know how you arrive to these valuations without seriously fudging things. It may as well say TSLA is worth a bajillion dollars. If your thing is "worth" orders of magnitude more than anyone would be willing to pay, guess what? It's really only as valuable as anyone would spend on it. Everything else is fluff.
nabla9 1y ago
>‘Tesla Dilemma’: Elon Musk is destroying Tesla’s profitable car business, but at the current valuation, his lies about self-driving and robots is what is keeping the stock alive. It's crazy and nuts but it makes sense. The choice is between keeping hype alive and delaying doom or doom now. Tesla P/E: 254 PEG: 116 For a car company with $1.46T market cap and modest revenue growth in last 12 quarters (3 years) those numbers are ridiculous.
jethronethro 1y ago
Let him leave. If the brand is built around him, rather than the product, then the company is doomed.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  I'd bet that Tesla would do much better without him. It wouldn't look like it at first, because there would be a correction of the value of the company from "imaginary" to "realistic", but it would result in a company that is on more solid ground.
TheAlchemist 1y ago
Fascinating situation. Tesla is at most worth 1/10 of it's current valuation. Given its huge legal liabilities ahead from selling 'self-driving cars' for the past 10 years, it's probably closer to 0. The crazy valuation is 100% dependent on Musk staying. Musk net worth is very much dependent on Tesla too - if Tesla crashes, so does his fortune (yes, SpaceX is valued at a crazy number too, but it's not liquid and doesn't bring any real cashflow, at least not yet. And he used Tesla shares as collateral worth billions). Tesla board member are all Musk buddies and have 0 agency. Telsa shareholders know perfectly well that the stock tanks if he's gone. Yeah, in short - everybody knows it doesn't make any sense anymore, including Musk and Tesla, but they have to keep the ball rolling, because they are all in it together. Every involved party looses money if he quits. If he stays they can get some more years of dumping their stock on naive 'investors' that are getting duped by the massive propaganda operation run on Twitter. PS. Robotaxi will serve 50% of US population before the end of the year according to Tesla & Musk /s
- sidibe 1y ago
  > everybody knows it doesn't make any sense anymore, The shareholders must not know. Because they can sell whenever they want they don't need to turn the company around. They think Elon is going to put ten billion Optimus out in a few years and the cars are all going to be robotaxis..or they think that more people will think that and send it higher.
  - dzhiurgis 1y ago
    What makes you think Tesla can't make Optimus?
    - marssaxman 1y ago
      They can't even deliver the self-driving car they keep promising; why should we believe that they have some special expertise in automation which will allow them to build better robots than anyone else?
      - dzhiurgis 1y ago
        Robotaxi is rolled out and we are not seeing crazy videos like we do with Waymo (who admittedly is doing more miles). What is exactly with their AI that does not satisfy your criteria? xAI seems to be SOTA, IIRC unbeated in coding performance for whole half year now or so.
        ben_w 1y ago
        > Robotaxi is rolled out and we are not seeing crazy videos like we do with Waymo (who admittedly is doing more miles). Robotaxi is two orders of magnitude worse than Waymo: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/09/teslas-robotaxi-test-three-crashes-in-only-7000-miles/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/09/teslas-robotaxi-test-th... > xAI seems to be SOTA, IIRC unbeated in coding performance for whole half year now or so (1) Not according to any of the listings I've seen. I mean, don't get me wrong, they're occasionally at the top, but nobody is persistently at the top for more than about 6 weeks. (2) xAI is not Tesla, and Musk has faced legal action because his work on xAI took talent and resources away from Tesla: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24177975/tesla-shareholder-lawsuit-elon-musk-xai-rival-compete https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24177975/tesla-shareholde...
johng 1y ago
You can't get SpaceX stock easily. Doesn't Tesla own some SpaceX stock? Could that be part of the valuation? I agree, it makes zero sense. I don't believe in Tesla long term but I do believe in SpaceX long term.
- verzali 1y ago
  I think a lot of people think of it as investing in Musk rather than investing in just Tesla.
Zigurd 1y ago
The shareholders are more or less willing hostages. If Elon leaves they lose 80% of their money. But there's another whole dimension to the problem: nobody will take the job until the stock price collapses. Any replacement for Elon will get the blame if they come in too soon.

21 points by breve 1y ago

These numbers are honestly ridiculous. I don't even know how you arrive to these valuations without seriously fudging things. It may as well say TSLA is worth a bajillion dollars. If your thing is "worth" orders of magnitude more than anyone would be willing to pay, guess what? It's really only as valuable as anyone would spend on it. Everything else is fluff.

nabla9 1y ago

>‘Tesla Dilemma’: Elon Musk is destroying Tesla’s profitable car business, but at the current valuation, his lies about self-driving and robots is what is keeping the stock alive. It's crazy and nuts but it makes sense. The choice is between keeping hype alive and delaying doom or doom now. Tesla P/E: 254 PEG: 116 For a car company with $1.46T market cap and modest revenue growth in last 12 quarters (3 years) those numbers are ridiculous.

jethronethro 1y ago

Let him leave. If the brand is built around him, rather than the product, then the company is doomed.

JohnFen 1y ago
I'd bet that Tesla would do much better without him. It wouldn't look like it at first, because there would be a correction of the value of the company from "imaginary" to "realistic", but it would result in a company that is on more solid ground.

TheAlchemist 1y ago

Fascinating situation. Tesla is at most worth 1/10 of it's current valuation. Given its huge legal liabilities ahead from selling 'self-driving cars' for the past 10 years, it's probably closer to 0. The crazy valuation is 100% dependent on Musk staying. Musk net worth is very much dependent on Tesla too - if Tesla crashes, so does his fortune (yes, SpaceX is valued at a crazy number too, but it's not liquid and doesn't bring any real cashflow, at least not yet. And he used Tesla shares as collateral worth billions). Tesla board member are all Musk buddies and have 0 agency. Telsa shareholders know perfectly well that the stock tanks if he's gone. Yeah, in short - everybody knows it doesn't make any sense anymore, including Musk and Tesla, but they have to keep the ball rolling, because they are all in it together. Every involved party looses money if he quits. If he stays they can get some more years of dumping their stock on naive 'investors' that are getting duped by the massive propaganda operation run on Twitter. PS. Robotaxi will serve 50% of US population before the end of the year according to Tesla & Musk /s

sidibe 1y ago
> everybody knows it doesn't make any sense anymore, The shareholders must not know. Because they can sell whenever they want they don't need to turn the company around. They think Elon is going to put ten billion Optimus out in a few years and the cars are all going to be robotaxis..or they think that more people will think that and send it higher.
- dzhiurgis 1y ago
  What makes you think Tesla can't make Optimus?
  - marssaxman 1y ago
    They can't even deliver the self-driving car they keep promising; why should we believe that they have some special expertise in automation which will allow them to build better robots than anyone else?
    - dzhiurgis 1y ago
      Robotaxi is rolled out and we are not seeing crazy videos like we do with Waymo (who admittedly is doing more miles). What is exactly with their AI that does not satisfy your criteria? xAI seems to be SOTA, IIRC unbeated in coding performance for whole half year now or so.
      - ben_w 1y ago
        > Robotaxi is rolled out and we are not seeing crazy videos like we do with Waymo (who admittedly is doing more miles). Robotaxi is two orders of magnitude worse than Waymo: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/09/teslas-robotaxi-test-three-crashes-in-only-7000-miles/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/09/teslas-robotaxi-test-th... > xAI seems to be SOTA, IIRC unbeated in coding performance for whole half year now or so (1) Not according to any of the listings I've seen. I mean, don't get me wrong, they're occasionally at the top, but nobody is persistently at the top for more than about 6 weeks. (2) xAI is not Tesla, and Musk has faced legal action because his work on xAI took talent and resources away from Tesla: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24177975/tesla-shareholder-lawsuit-elon-musk-xai-rival-compete https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24177975/tesla-shareholde...

johng 1y ago

You can't get SpaceX stock easily. Doesn't Tesla own some SpaceX stock? Could that be part of the valuation? I agree, it makes zero sense. I don't believe in Tesla long term but I do believe in SpaceX long term.

verzali 1y ago
I think a lot of people think of it as investing in Musk rather than investing in just Tesla.

Zigurd 1y ago

The shareholders are more or less willing hostages. If Elon leaves they lose 80% of their money. But there's another whole dimension to the problem: nobody will take the job until the stock price collapses. Any replacement for Elon will get the blame if they come in too soon.