Elon Musk’s Record Tesla Pay Package Could Net Him Tens Of Billions Even If He Does A Bad Job

Good morning! It’s Thursday, October 9, 2025, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you’ll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

In this morning’s edition, Elon Musk’s new pay package could get him heaps of money even if he misses most of Tesla’s goals, a fire at an aluminum plant is hitting Ford’s pickup production hard, Ineos wants to start building vehicles in the U.S. to avoid tariffs, and Hyundai is recalling 135,000 Santa Fes because of a pesky fire issue.

Back in September, Tesla directors offered CEO Elon Musk the biggest executive pay package in corporate history, which is a bit of a gamble to say the least. The board reassured its investors that Musk would have to achieve some “Mars-shot milestones” to earn the $878 billion in Tesla stock over 10 years. The proposal stated that the CEO would have to  “completely transform Tesla and society as we know it.” That means it would have to take a big step forward in robotics and autonomous driving. Its stock value and profits would also have to increase. If that sort of stuff didn’t happen, Musk would get “zero.”

Welp, that’s not the case. Apparently, Musk could still “earn” tens of billions of dollars without meeting most of those targets, according to a Reuters analysis of his performance goals, as well as more than a dozen experts in executive pay, company valuations, robotics and automotive trends like automotive driving. Tesla is very much Elon’s world, and everyone else is just living in it. From Reuters:

He could collect more than $50 billion by hitting a handful of the board’s easier goals that won’t necessarily revolutionize Tesla’s products or business, the Reuters review found.

Even hitting just two of the easiest targets, along with modest stock growth, would net Musk $26 billion, more than the lifetime pay of the next eight best-paid CEOs combined, a group that includes Meta Platforms’ Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, according to an analysis for Reuters by research firm Equilar.

Musk’s vehicle sales goals are exceptionally easy to achieve, according to four automotive experts. If Musk sells 1.2 million cars a year over the next decade, on average, he earns $8.2 billion in stock if Tesla’s market value grows from $1.4 trillion today to $2 trillion in 2035, well under long-term market-average growth. That’s a half-million fewer cars per year than Tesla sold in 2024.

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Three other product-development goals are written in vague language that could provide Musk hefty payouts without significantly boosting profit, according to six robotics or autonomous-driving industry experts who reviewed Musk’s goals for Reuters.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Tesla board said: “The proposed pay package is actually worth zero to our CEO unless and until the shareholders see the value of the company nearly double and an operational milestone is met.”

The board’s pay proposal requires Elon to stay on as executive for at least seven and a half years to collect any stock compensation. However, he would get voting rights associated with the shares awarded as soon as he earns them. Last month, Musk posted on X, the everything app, that the pay package wasn’t “about ‘compensation.'” He says it’s actually about him having “enough influence over Tesla to ensure safety if we build millions of robots.” Of course, he probably won’t say no to the money, either.

Production at Ford’s F-150 Lightning plant in Dearborn, Michigan, is being paused next week, following a September 16 fire at a New York aluminum manufacturing facility, according to a union official. It’s expected that the fire at the Novelis plant could cause even more disruptions to F-150 production in the future and may take $1 billion from the Blue Oval’s bottom line.

A memo shared with workers at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center said production will be halted next week. Spokespeople for Ford confirmed that the shutdown was related to the Novelis plant fire. From Reuters:

Ford began using a mainly aluminum body on its F-150 truck more than a decade ago in an effort to reduce the weight of the vehicle. It produces F-150 and Super Duty models at plants in Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio. The automaker declined to say whether any production changes were planned at those locations.

“Novelis is one of several aluminum suppliers to Ford. Since the fire nearly three weeks ago, Ford has been working closely with Novelis, and a full team is dedicated to addressing the situation and exploring all possible alternatives to minimize any potential disruptions,” a Ford spokesperson said in a statement, in response to a question about the fire.

Ford hasn’t mentioned any specifics on production adjustments just yet. 

The market is already reacting to the news. Ford’s stock price fell 6% on Tuesday following news of the fire impacting Ford’s business. The automaker’s shares fell another 1.5% on Wednesday, October 8, closing at $11.74.

Ineos is the latest automaker looking to move production to the U.S. to skirt President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The British automaker’s CEO, Lynn Calder, is apparently scouting locations to move production of its Grenadier SUV to the U.S. “as quickly as possible.” We are Ineos’ biggest market, after all, even if it recently had to cut prices.

Currently, the Grenadier and Grenadier Quartermaster pickup are built at a factory in Hamback, France. Ineos purchased the former Mercedes-Benz plant in 2020; Grenadier production then began in 2022, and U.S. sales started in late 2023. Calder admitted that the economics of building these trucks in France and selling them in the U.S. have become more difficult thanks to U.S. duties. From Automotive News:

“Europe is a high-cost location to manufacture anything, quite frankly . . . and now you add the tariff on top of that, for sure, it’s made things a lot more challenging,” Calder said.

Calder told Automotive News Europe this year that the U.S. accounted for more than 60 percent of Ineos’ global sales.

The brand’s U.S. retail footprint has steadily expanded since its launch.

Ineos does not release sales figures, but a spokesperson in August said U.S. deliveries in the first half of 2025 rose 2 percent compared with the first half of 2024. U.S. sales of the Quartermaster began in early 2025.

According to S&P Global Mobility, Ineos’ U.S. vehicle registrations, a proxy for sales, dropped 16 percent to 2,824 through July.

Right now, vehicles exported from the EU face a 15% tariff, but the Quartermaster has to deal with the infamous 25% chicken tax as well.

Calder says Ineos is weighing all of its options, including building a factory from scratch or using another automaker’s excess capacity. However, it has no plans to close its Hamback factory.

Hyundai is recalling 135,386 Santa Fe crossovers because of an increased fire risk during a crash, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. I don’t have to tell you why this isn’t ideal. Apparently, an improperly installed cover on the starter motor on certain 2024 and 2025 Santa Fes is the culprit. From Car and Driver:

The issue only affects nonhybrid Santa Fe models, all of which are equipped with Hyundai’s turbocharged 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine. According to the NHTSA documents, the starter motor in affected cars may have been produced with a cover that wasn’t fully seated over the “B+” terminal. Depending on the severity of the crash, if the engine compartment becomes deformed in the wrong way, the uncovered terminal could come in contact with the cooling fan assembly, leading to an electrical short and potentially starting a fire.

At the time of filing the recall, Hyundai reported that it was aware of one New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) test that resulted in a fire. The automaker is otherwise unaware of any incidents involving the issue in the field.

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Owners will be instructed to take affected models to a local dealer, who will inspect the starter motor covers and reinstall them as necessary.

Hyundai will start notifying both dealers and Santa Fe owners of the recall starting on December 1, 2025. Until then, I suppose it’s best you try not to get in an accident — not that you were planning on it. Just be, you know, extra careful.

History.com

If you want to learn more about the Malibu that found itself intimately acquainted with a piece of space, head over to History.com.

My beloved New York Yankees let me down once again last night in game four of the ALDS, so I get to spend another winter thinking about how Aaron Judge could start regressing at any minute. Don’t worry, though. I’m also a Jets and Penn State Football fan (I live in hell). At least I have the Knicks to look forward to… right?