Tesla held its annual shareholder meeting earlier today, where it formally voted to approve CEO Elon Musk's new and highly controversial compensation plan. If fully implemented, this plan could make Elon Musk the world's first "trillionaire".
After the compensation package was approved, Elon Musk took the stage to make several major announcements, including previewing that FSD (Full Self-Driving) would be able to "text while driving" within "one or two months", that dedicated Robotaxi (Cybercab) would go into production next April, and the ambitious production vision for Optimus robots.
A market capitalization of 8.5 trillion and a million robots: an "all-or-nothing" compensation scheme
The compensation package approved this time is another "all or nothing" design, following the one in 2018. This plan, which was revealed in September of this year, lists a number of extremely stringent milestones that Elon Musk must achieve in order to receive the huge reward.
Key metrics include:
• Market capitalization target: Tesla's market capitalization must reach $8.5 trillion (compared to its current value of approximately $1.4 trillion).
• Operational metrics: Successfully sold 100 million Optimus humanoid robots.
• Strategic objectives: Establish a clear succession plan for future leadership.
External analysts believe that, considering Elon Musk currently heads multiple companies including SpaceX and xAI, the purpose of this compensation package may be as a strong incentive to ensure that the CEO continues to focus on creating more value for Tesla's shareholders.
Especially given Tesla's recent operational challenges—including record revenue but plummeting profits in its Q3 earnings report, and multiple investigations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and pressure from the California Department of Insurance in October—the overwhelming approval of this high-value proposal by shareholders clearly indicates a bet on Elon Musk's long-term vision for the future.
FSD Update: Unsupervised driving to be available "within one or two months"
At the shareholder meeting, Elon Musk made a surprising statement regarding FSD. He said that Tesla is "almost comfortable" allowing FSD users to "text and drive".
He announced that Tesla will enable unsupervised full-slow drive (FSD) within "one or two months" (i.e., by the end of 2025). This means FSD will jump from the current Level 2 driver assistance to at least Level 4 (where the driver can completely disengage). However, while Elon Musk mentioned that he would review safety data first, he did not elaborate on whether he had discussed the legality of this move with regulatory agencies.
Cybercab: Production to begin next April, producing one car every 10 seconds.
Elon Musk announced that production of the dedicated Robotaxi, "Cybercab," will begin in April 2026.
Elon Musk emphasized that Cybercab is designed for fully autonomous driving, with no pedals, no steering wheel, and not even side mirrors. Musk stated that its manufacturing process is drastically different from typical car production, "more like cell phone manufacturing," and believes it could eventually achieve an astonishing production speed of one car every 10 seconds.
Flying car demonstration: Delayed to April 1, 2026
Elon Musk also updated his previous announcement on Joe Rogan's show."Flying car"Timeline. He postponed the original promise of showcasing the prototype "before the end of the year" to April 1, 2026.
Whether this date is an April Fool's joke remains to be seen. However, Elon Musk claims that production of the Tesla flying car will begin "about a year" after the prototype is unveiled.
Optimus: The largest product in history, with a target annual production of 10 billion units.
On Optimus humanoid robotIn this regard, Elon Musk once again offered an extremely optimistic vision. He called the Optimus "the biggest product of all time," saying it's "bigger than a phone, bigger than anything else."
In terms of production planning, Tesla will start with a production line of 1 million units, followed by 10 million units, with the ultimate goal of producing 100 million to 1000 billion Optimus robots annually.
In terms of applications, Elon Musk envisions these robots providing medical care in the future, and even proposed a peculiar idea—that criminals might no longer need to go to prison, but instead be followed by an Optimus robot to prevent them from committing crimes again.
As always, Elon Musk's proposed timelines (including FSD, Cybercab, flying cars, and Optimus) are very aggressive, but given his past record of delays, the outside world generally remains skeptical about their feasibility.
