Musk’s Compensation Dream Is A Reality — So What Comes Next?

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s compensation package is a done deal, and now we are immersed in the waiting game. Was it only two years ago in which Master Plan 3 was released, with its laser focus on sustainable energy? Not anymore. Now Musk is pushing agendas for AI, robots, and self-driving cars. His vision for long-term vehicle sales growth at Tesla is wrapped up in trying to achieve full self-driving (FSD) capability and robotaxi deployment.

A repeated headline about Tesla this morning read, “Could Buying Tesla stock today set you up for life?” It’s a company that is seeing its research and development costs rise 57% at the same time as its operating margin is tumbling. Yet Musk continues to insist the company’s future lies beyond electric vehicles. Achieving those goals is going to be very expensive.

What do you think? Are the following prospects the right fit for another robust, market-busting Tesla surge, as were Tesla’s EVs? Here are some of the areas in which Tesla’s valuation depends.

New EV model: There have been rumors of a new Tesla model with a starting price of around $25,000 for years. Research into that model design was eliminated last year by Musk, regardless of its likely financial viability. Some observers feel that Tesla’s ennui over its core car business poses major risks for investors. Patrick George writes in The Atlantic that, while Elon Musk still makes some of America’s best electric cars, “it’s clearer than ever that Tesla’s future is not in selling cars.” Can Tesla continue to inspire sales from its existing catalog without regular new model launches?

Supercharger network: Even after firing and rehiring its Supercharger staff, Tesla’s Supercharger deployment has steadily grown. In Q3 2025, the number of active Supercharging stations grew by 16%, from 6,706 a year prior to 7,753. That’s significant growth in one of the key areas of Tesla’s business that it still holds a strong competitive advantage in. Supercharger connectors themselves grew from 62,421 in Q3 2024 to 73,817 in Q4 2025, an 18% increase.

Full Self-Driving: A new section on the Tesla website is dedicated to the company’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software. The video that streams across the top of the page is pretty persuasive, as it shows multiple driving situations in which a human driver made an error and the FSD software kicked in, adjusted the Tesla’s course, and prevented the Tesla from being in an accident.

“FSD (Supervised) enables your vehicle to drive you almost anywhere with your active supervision, requiring minimal intervention. When engaged and under your active supervision, your likelihood of being in a collision goes down.”

The site boasts of 7× fewer major collisions, 7× fewer minor collisions, and 5× fewer off-highway collisions. An interesting graph points to Teslas with FSD engaged driving 5.1 million miles before a major collision as compared to 699,000 miles for the US average. The same graph indicates that it takes an average of 1.5 million miles with FSD engaged before a Tesla is involved in a minor collision, as opposed to 229,000 for the US average. To determine these collision rates, Tesla says it examines objective and programmatic metrics such as collision frequency and airbag deployment rates to “serve as a reliable proxy for collision severity.”

Not everyone agrees with this Tesla data analysis and suggests, instead, that the reality is a far lower rate than the national average, based on statistics provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Also, Tesla’s quarterly safety reports look at its Autopilot function, not at FSD, the former of which was designed to be used on highways. As such, the incidence of accidents while highway driving is on average among all vehicles much fewer. On the other hand, Tesla recently launched its new self-driving hardware chip, AI5, and it is reported to significantly outperform the previous chip, AI14.

Robotaxi pilot program: We’re still waiting for up-to-date data on the Austin Robotaxi trial, too, in which the company has continued to place humans in the driver’s seat as a safety precaution. Tesla plans to launch its Robotaxi pilot service in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, and Miami soon. The company has now launched an app, “Robotaxi,” which is in use solely in the Austin metro area where Tesla is offering robotaxi rides with a safety driver onboard and the Bay Area metro area for Tesla employees.

xAI: Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley asked Musk on the Q3 earnings call about the importance of xAI to Tesla “and the broader Muskonomy.” Jonas suggested that xAI’s “natural synergies of data, software, hardware, and manufacturing” work  in recursive loops. A “co-determination” between Tesla and xAI, Jonas continued, should become more obvious with Tesla in the year ahead. Musk responded to Jonas in a general affirmative. “My companies are, surprisingly in some ways, trending towards convergence.” Will xAI be the next big Tesla acquisition, and, if so, is it a financially viable asset?

Energy storage: Tesla’s biggest growth percentage in its financial and operational summaries was the 81% growth of energy storage deployed in the 3rd quarter year over year. Deployment rose from 6.9 GWh in Q3 2024 to 12.5 GWh in Q3 2025. Is energy storage exciting enough to capture Musk’s ongoing interest? Many people around the world would love new opportunities for residential renewable energy and storage, and larger grid storage projects keep increasing, but there’s also plenty of competition.

Optimus robot: As Tesla shifts from automotive industry-changing success, its new emphasis falls on new applications for everyday tech. A goal of 10,000 Optimus robots doing useful things for Tesla came and went earlier this year. That didn’t stop Musk, who subsequently  predicted that Optimus would eventually represent 80% of the value of Tesla. A fully functioning AI robot opens up limitless labor supply — constrained only by cost & resources to make it — creating an exponential boost for any economy. Then again, it is a highly complex endeavor.

Final Thoughts

Wedbush Securities managing director Dan Ives recently commented that Tesla retail investors tend to be more highly informed than ever before. Ives told Yahoo Finance that such investors have developed fully fleshed out theories and asked questions that “only the most sophisticated institutional investors would have asked.” No longer, Ives said, should pole position in market knowledge be automatically given to Wall Street analysts or hedge fund traders.” They’re front and center,” a very important investor class “that’s very informed.”

How will investors respond after Musk’s compensation package approval and his wavering focus? Are they “very informed” and savvy? Several key company elements right now are trending in the wrong direction, and our CleanTechnica editor Zachary Shahan says those “certainly don’t seem to justify Tesla being a massive ‘growth stock.’”

Jordan Fitzgerald argues on Yahoo Finance, “In the stock market’s rarefied air where mega-cap technology behemoths reside, Tesla Inc. stands out — but for all the wrong reasons. Chief among them is its stunning lack of earnings growth while its stock price continues to soar.”

Then again, the company has $41 billion to play with.