The Tesla board approved the interim award yesterday, with recusals from Musk and his brother, Kimbal. The Tesla board is still working on “a longer-term CEO compensation strategy, which we plan to put to a shareholder vote at the November 6 annual meeting,” the letter said.
The interim award would vest in two years, and Musk would be required to hold the stock for five years. It has a provision preventing Musk from being paid twice for the same time period in the event that the 2018 plan is reinstated.
“If the Delaware courts fully reinstate the 2018 CEO Performance Award, this interim award will be forfeited or returned or a portion of the 2018 CEO Performance Award will be forfeited,” the letter to shareholders said. “To put it simply, there cannot be any ‘double dip.’ Elon will not be able to keep this new award in addition to the options he will be awarded under the 2018 CEO Performance Award should the courts rule in our favor.”
Tesla brand loyalty plummeted
While the interim award would boost Musk’s ownership of Tesla from about 13 percent to 16 percent, getting the full 2018 pay plan would give him over 20 percent of the company, the Financial Times wrote. Musk complained last month, “I’ve got so little control that I can easily be ousted by activist shareholders after having built this army of humanoid robots.”
Amid disappointing sales figures, Tesla’s stock price has fallen 19 percent since the beginning of 2025. Tesla’s brand loyalty among US-based customers collapsed after Musk backed Trump in the presidential race last year, according to S&P Global Mobility research cited in a Reuters report today.
The data shows that “Tesla’s customer loyalty peaked in June 2024, when 73 percent of Tesla-owning households in the market for a new car bought another Tesla,” the report said. But that rate fell to 49.9 percent by March 2025, below the industry average, though it rebounded to 57.4 percent in May. The numbers are based on vehicle registration data in all 50 states, the report said.
“I’ve never seen this rapid of a decline in such a short period of time,” S&P analyst Tom Libby told Reuters.