Thinking of learning to ride? Here’s why your first motorcycle should be electric
The world of motorcycles is rapidly changing, with the rise of electric motorcycles heralding a new era of motorcycling. If you’re considering getting your first motorcycle, there’s never been a better time to join the electric revolution. Electric motorcycles are the perfect first ride for anyone entering the world of two wheels, offering numerous advantages over traditional combustion engine-powered bikes. From better control to reduced maintenance and even lower operating cost, electric motorcycles are the perfect starter bike.
This is going to be controversial for traditional riders who grew up on gassers. That’s fine. This article isn’t for them. It’s for you, a prospective rider who sees the advantages of getting around on two wheels (fun, convenience, cost, lifestyle, parking, etc.) and is trying to decide if it’s time to join up and on what type of bike.
Many folks who have been riding for years or decades will tell you that you have to learn on a gas bike. Why? Because that’s how they learned.
What a terrible reason to do something, “because that’s the way it used to be done.” We’re living in the future, congratulations! Doctors no longer prescribe arsenic to treat headaches and you no longer have to ride on a loud, leaking, and vibrating combustion chamber. You’ve got options now, and one of those options is the choice to leapfrog century-old technology and go electric right from the start.
As a relatively young rider (34, to be exact), I’ve come of age in my motorcycling journey during a time when both electric and combustion-engine bikes were readily available. And so I fortunately had the chance to compare both without being forced to fall in love with only one because it was my single option at the time like most older riders.
And that has taught me that combustion engine bikes have essentially two and only two advantages over electric motorcycles: It’s fun to run through the gears, and they can be ridden on cross-country trips for more than a couple hours without needing to stop for a charge. That’s about it.
Everything else comes up heads for electric motorcycles, especially when you’re talking about a new rider getting their first bike.
Ease of control
Electric motorcycles are generally (but not always) single-speed, meaning you have no gears to shift. They aren’t automatic transmission since there isn’t any shifting, but it’s fairly analogous to comparing a car with a manual transmission to one with an automatic transmission.
Sure, it’s fun shifting. I learned to drive on a car three times my age with a stick throw so long I had to lean forward to hit first and third gear. But it was also much more to learn, complicating the process.
The same goes for learning to ride a motorcycle. If you’re new to manual transmissions, you have to learn not only how to control a motorcycle’s movement, but also how to shift gears. Those are two very different but equally important concepts and motions. Having gone through both learning processes, I can tell you that it’s just much easier to learn to ride on an electric. Without worrying about any shifting, 100% of your focus is on your riding. That means more mental energy for bike control, car awareness, road debris, lane presence, etc. Those things will eventually be second nature to the point that you don’t even think about them, but when learning to ride it is much easier to learn those things without also having to think, “Wait, that car just pulled out in front of me, did I slow enough for second gear or should I be in third before I let this clutch back out?”
The downside of the single-speed setup on e-motorcycles is that you don’t get the fun feeling of running through the gears. I do miss it sometimes, and it’s pretty much the only part of riding gas bikes that I enjoy more than electrics. But since the tradeoff is that you can repeatedly unleash the crazy performance of electric motorcycles like Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire One with its 3 second 0-60 mph time — all without needing to shift — usually makes up for it. The other saving grace here is for commuters. When you’re riding in traffic or otherwise commuting through a city with lots of starts and stops, shifting turns from something fun into an annoying chore.
Speaking of ease of control, a light electric motorcycle makes a great upgrade from a powerful electric bicycle since the controls are so similar. I got started with motorcycling this very way. In 2010 I found my way into high power DIY electric bicycles – essentially e-bikes that exceeded the legal limits of traditional electric bicycles. At a certain point you want to go even faster with even more power, only to realize that you’re basically building a motorcycle on a bicycle frame.
That’s where a lot of people make the decision to just jump into real motorcycles and enjoy the added benefits of higher quality and safer components, not to mention finally being street legal again.
Many electric motorcycles forego the traditional foot lever rear brake for a hand lever instead, more closely mimicking bicycle controls. A quick note though: If you’re not in an already backwards country like the UK, you’ll find motorcycle brakes and bicycle brakes are reversed from each other, i.e., the right brake lever controls the front brake on a motorcycle. As someone who goes back and between e-bikes and e-motorcycles, often in the same day, it’s a little mental note that is important to master.
Having two hand brake levers makes an electric motorcycle even easier to control, especially for new riders that are already familiar with bicycles. Traditional motorcyclists that are used to a foot brake will usually say they prefer it, but that’s because it’s what they’re used to. Again, we have better options now because we live in the future. Hand controls are more precise. Throw a basketball at the hoop and even the least athletic among us will probably at least hit the backboard. Now try again with your foot and see how close you get. Hand control is simply more intuitive and easier.
Electric motorcycles require less maintenance
This is probably the biggest single advantage of electrics over gas bikes. And I have a lot of personal experience with it. Electric motorcycles aren’t maintenance free, but they’re pretty darn close. You’ve still got tires and brakes to keep an eye on (and a chain if you don’t have a belt drive bike), but those are few and far between issues. Gas bikes require much more frequent maintenance to keep them running well since their engines are a collection of hundreds of moving parts instead of an electric motor’s single spinning shaft.
My sister rides a 250cc bike. I ride electrics. Guess who’s bike is constantly needing work here and there to keep it running well?
If your goal with getting into motorcycling is to actually ride, then electric is probably for you. If you’d rather spend a good bit of your time wrenching instead of riding, then perhaps an engine based on 100+ year-old technology is right for you.
Electric motorcycles are cheaper to operate
When it comes to daily operating costs, there’s no comparison. Electric is simply easier on your wallet.
And it’s not just the fuel. Sure, gas is expensive compared to much cheaper electricity. That’s an easy one to see the instant advantage of electric drive. But it’s all the other costs that add up too.
There are no air filters to replace. There are no periodic oil changes. There’s not a constant list of consumables that you have to keep buying in order to ride.
And depending where you live, electric motorcycles come with other benefits. I pay significantly lower monthly insurance rates because my bike is electric. Where I live, a 1,000cc-equivalent electric motorcycle has an insurance rate of a 250cc motorcycle. Many countries also offer incentives like reduced toll fares or cheaper parking permits, though you can often get away with parking motorcycles for free when they fit into smaller areas that cars can’t park.
Electric motorcycles are quieter, smoother, and more comfortable to ride
Electric motorcycles offer a better ride experience because they are quieter, smoother, and more comfortable. That’s actually three benefits in one, so let’s break it down.
Electric motorcycles are quieter than combustion engine motorcycles, and this is a big advantage. You can hear things happening around you, whether that’s animals in the forest, approaching car danger, or the musings of your riding partners. Being able to carry on a conversation while riding next to a friend or with others at a stop light is a nice bonus. You can roll out in the morning without rumbling exhaust annoying your neighbors or waking the baby. A few years ago I was in LA and went on an early Sunday morning sunrise cruise through a super fancy Hollywood neighborhood on a Harley-Davidson LiveWire. I enjoyed winding through the hilly residential streets on one of Harley’s burliest and quickest motorcycles (0-60 mph in three seconds flat!) yet without waking the occupants of all the fancy houses I was drooling over. The few people awake and out on morning walks gave me a smile and wave and instead of dirty looks for riding a loud motorcycle through their neighborhoods early in the morning.
And don’t for a second buy that silly “loud pipes save lives” misconception. There are few larger fallacies in the world of motorcycles. We’ve all been in a car before, either parked or moving, only to be startled when a loud motorcycle whizzes by the door. It’s startling because we didn’t realize it was coming. Which is the whole point, and illustrates that loud pipes do nothing other than annoy people parked next to you at a red light. Cars are so sound-proof these days that even a loud motorcycle is on top of them before a driver even realizes it. You’re buying yourself a fraction of a second early warning at most, and in some cases that can be even more dangerous when a loud bike spooks a driver into doing something stupid.
And gas bike riders who are relying on their exhaust noise alerting drivers are actually at a disadvantage. Too many drivers with headphones or talking on their phones will be completely oblivious to loud motorcycles. Relying on them hearing you is a good way to get yourself hurt or killed.
As an electric motorcycle rider, I don’t wonder if drivers see or hear me. I just assume they don’t. That allows me to always ride as if I am invisible to drivers and to make defensive riding decisions accordingly. “Loud pipes” are a dangerous crutch. They don’t save lives, aware riding does.
Next, electric motorcycles are smoother. Their power delivery is immediate and fairly linear. When you twist the throttle, you know exactly what you’re going to get. It doesn’t depend on your RPM level, how closely you matched your clutch speed to your engine speed, or how your carburetor is tuned for the current temperature and altitude. An electric motorcycle’s drivetrain is a precise computer-controlled machine, not a literal combustion chamber harnessing thousands of explosions to spin a wheel. That makes every movement on an electric motorcycle smoother and more predictable, which is exactly what a beginner rider needs.
Lastly, riding an electric motorcycle is more comfortable. There’s no heat source roasting your thighs or the ankle of your passenger. In traffic you aren’t sitting in a cloud of exhaust (at least not your own). Your garage doesn’t have oil stains on the ground. The bike isn’t vibrating your wrists or your family jewels (not to mention the studies that show the heat and vibration of gas motorcycles contributes to low sperm count and erectile dysfunction). Just about every aspect of the riding or ownership experience is physically more comfortable as well as healthier.
Future-proofing your motorcycle
When looking to the future, a combustion engine-powered motorcycle simply seems like a poor investment from a few directions.
For one thing, many countries are introducing stricter regulations against polluting vehicles. Next, electric motorcycles are constantly debuting new technological advancements. In comparison, there haven’t been many big technological advancements in combustion motorcycles in decades. The technology has basically been refined as far as engineers can take it. There’s not much more we can do with exploding gasoline in a cylinder.
But electric motorcycles, which are already outperforming combustion motorcycles, are still in their infancy. Every year we see huge leaps forward. Some new advancements can even be downloaded as new features. Try that on a gasser.
But don’t electric motorcycles suck to charge?
If you’re new to electric motorcycles or even electric vehicles in general, then you’re probably thinking that charging is a major downside.
In some rare cases, you’d be correct. For example, if you want to do motorcycle touring (riding many hundreds or even 1,000+ miles per day), then it can be burdensome on the majority of today’s electric motorcycles. It’s been done on e-motorcycles, though it takes a bit of planning.
But outside of the rare case of someone riding through multiple states in a single day, charging is actually an advantage of electric motorcycles, not a disadvantage.
If you use your motorcycle for commuting or daily transportation, a battery is simply better than a fuel tank. Since you can charge at home overnight, you start every day with a “full tank.” It’s as convenient as having a gas station in your garage, except without the smell or long lines. With a battery instead of a fuel tank, you’re never stopping to fuel up since you simply charge at home while you’re sleeping. Most electric motorcycles have ranges of hundreds of miles in the city. That means for commuters, you’re basically never worried about range or where you can find a plug since you start every morning fueled up.
Ironically, you’ll find that when used in a commuter role it is gas-powered motorcycles that end up range anxiety. They can’t fuel up at home so they always need to know where a gas station is.
The traditional gas bike riders will try to tell you that because electric motorcycles aren’t as good at touring, they’d make a poor choice to own. But again, they’re wrong.
First of all, most people don’t go on several-hundred-mile touring rides that often. It’s a small minority of all motorcycle rides. For most people, finding several days or weeks to dedicate to such rides simply isn’t feasible very often. And if that’s something you really want to do once or twice a year, you can rent a gas bike to do it. That way for the other 360 days a year you ride a nicer, more convenient electric motorcycles.
As a new rider, the vast majority of your rides will be in the sub-one-hour range. You’re not going to be riding coast to coast very often in the beginning of your motorcycling journey.
Secondly, electric motorcycles actually can do touring thanks to fast charging. Several e-motorcycles now use DC Fast Charging, which refills the battery most of the way in around 35 minutes. It’s longer than a gas fill up, sure. But after a couple hours of riding, you’ll want to take a break to stretch your legs, get a coffee, drain out the last coffee, etc.
Are electric motorcycles expensive?
Purchase price and charging times are the two major areas that I hear gas bike riders cite as reasons new riders shouldn’t start with an electric motorcycle. We’ve already covered why the charging issue is baloney. Now let’s talk price tags.
Addmitely, electric motorcycles are usually still a bit more expensive than gas bikes with the same speed and power specs. It’s to be expected since a better vehicle is going to cost more. But the price gaps aren’t as big as they used to be, with the larger price gaps still on the higher performance end of the spectrum. And most new riders aren’t going to start with an ultra high performance electric motorcycle.
If you look at something like a $25,000 Energica that can hold its own against a Ducati, then yes, they’re expensive. But if you start with a much more reasonable lightweight or middleweight electric motorcycle, then the prices are more reasonable as well.
The SONDORS Metacycle, which is capable of highway speeds but is better suited for suburban or urban commuting, fluctuates between $4,000 to $6,500 depending on current sales. Newcomers like the Ryvid Anthem are priced at $7,800. And the CSC RX1E, which can reach 80 mph (130 km/h) and has a city range of around 80-100 miles (130-160 km), is priced at around US $8,500.
But if you want to go even smaller and really dip your foot in the shallow end of the electric motorcycle pool, there are mini options like the CSC City Slicker at just $2,900.
Granted, these are all available in the US as that is where the majority of our audience lives. But if you’re outside of the US then you probably have even more options for low-power and mid-power electric motorcycles.
Most of these bikes are imported from Asia anyway, and Europe and Oceania are currently being flooded with new options for cost-effective and modestly powered electric motorcycles. So while this article is a bit America-centric, rest assured that you’ve probably got some good low-cost e-motorcycle options in your neck of the woods.
An environmentally conscious decision
You’ll notice I saved this one for last. I think the environmental impact of electric motorcycles is important, since we have only one planet Earth and we all share it. But let’s be honest, most new riders are going to place more importance on the fun, convenience, and cost aspects of electric motorcycles.
Even so, you should know what a big impact on the environment is at stake here. Emissions caused by transportation are one of the leading causes of climate change. While trying to not sound too alarmist here, we are steadily destroying this planet. If you have children, they will live in a worse environment than you do now. That is a simple fact, not up for debate.
There’s a chance that if humanity works together, we can change that. I’m not yet totally convinced that our species has the collective will to achieve that level of cooperation, but it is still physically possible. And putting fewer polluting vehicles on the road is a step in that direction. Even if not for your future kids’ health, then what about yours? If I asked you to wrap your lips around the tailpipe of a combustion engine, would you do it? No, of course not. You know that’s literally cancer-causing fumes being pumped out of it. So why would you ask other people to breath in a carcinogenic cloud from your own tail pipe?
Electric motorcycles make the perfect starter bikes for new riders
So there we go, I’ve beaten this dead horse to the point of corpse desecration. The point is simple: Electric motorcycles make a better choice for new riders for so many reasons. They’re easier to learn on. They’re easier to ride. They’re cheaper and more convenient to own. They’re healthier for you and everyone around you. They’re simply better.
Despite all those benefits though, you unfortunately will probably still need to ride a gas bike, at least for a few days. If you live in the US or many other countries, you’ll still likely have to learn to ride a gas motorcycle to get your license. At least, for now.
I’ve gotten two motorcycle licenses in two countries and each time I was put on a gas bike to do it. Several years ago I got my motorcycle license in an MSF course in the US. It was two evenings of classroom instruction followed by a weekend of parking lot instruction, capped off with a parking lot exam. After years of riding in Tel Aviv without a local motorcycle endorsement (“Sorry officer, I didn’t know…”) I finally went through the process internationally too. There it involved 12 classes of combined parking lot and street-riding instruction, followed by both a parking lot and a street-riding exam.
In both cases I was put on a gas bike to do my instruction and testing. As much as I’ve harped on the advantages of electric motorcycles, I don’t hate that I had to learn and demonstrate proficiency on a gas bike multiple times. It’s allowed me to occasionally borrow gas bikes from friends or family. And if I ever need to do an action movie sequence where I kick someone off a motorcycle and hijack it to chase down a bad guy, chances are it’s still going to be a gas bike for the next few years until electric motorcycles eventually become the majority.
So it’s not a bad skill to have, knowing how to operate a gas bike. It’s kind of like the value of knowing how to operate a manual transmission in a car. I almost never drive anymore since I pretty much live on two wheels. But the rare case comes up, usually on vacation, where my wife and I are the only ones in our friends group that know how to drive a stick. That means when traveling, especially in Europe and Asia, we’re able to beg, borrow, or rent a car more easily (though it has the downside of forcing us to be designated drivers in any group we’re in). It’s not a skill I use often, but I’m glad to have it. And so if you have to learn how to ride a gas bike to get your license and then immediately switch to an electric bike, that’s not a terrible thing.
And look, even if after this long and drawn-out article about the advantages of electric motorcycles you still end up wanting a gas bike, I won’t lose any sleep over it. Whatever you ride, you’re going to have a blast. You may be surprised how open and accepting the motorcycle world is. It’s full of fun people that enjoy riding. At around a quarter of the red lights I roll up to other gas bikers will start asking me about my electric ride. It’s a fun world full of cool people. And if you end up on a gas bike, that’s not the end of the world. You’ll still have a great time.
Just not as great as if you went electric. ?
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Tesla, a company that prides itself on not advertising, is in the midst of a serious marketing effort. In doing so it’s exploiting employees, attacking shareholders, and retaining outside strategy firms to help it advertise.
It’s running these ads not to boost its falling sales, but rather to advocate for another unprecedented award for its CEO, which would keep the company stuck with him for years even as earnings drop precipitously under his direction.
(Update: This article, originally posted 10/18, has now been updated to acknowledge Musk’s comments this week on “corporate terrorism” and on his desire to “control” an “enormous robot army”)
In September, Tesla’s board proposed a stock award worth up to $1 trillion for CEO Elon Musk. It includes several milestones regarding Tesla stock and product performance, each of which unlocks tens of billions of dollars for Musk.
It’s the largest award proposed for any CEO of any company by multiple orders of magnitude – with previous proposed Musk awards holding the second and third place positions as well. The proposal will be voted on by TSLA shareholders at Tesla’s shareholder meeting on November 6.
Previously, Tesla’s board has attempted to propose smaller, but still absurd, stock awards. A previous proposal to give Musk a ~$55 billion pay package was ruled illegal after the board misled shareholders and was found to be too closely tied to Musk. Tesla then put that same pay package up to another vote, using the same dishonest tactics, where it passed again.
Unsurprisingly, given that the same Elon-tied board engaged in the same misleading behavior as it had before, the pay package was again voided, saving Tesla shareholders $55 billion. That award is now in court again, with another decision soon to come.
The decisions were made by Delaware’s Court of Chancery, a famously pro-corporate court, and this resulted in Musk recommending a knee-jerk move of Tesla’s incorporation to Texas, a state with little established corporate law but where Musk thought he could exercise greater control over shareholders.
But the story has continued. Tesla’s board moved in August to give Musk an “Interim Award” worth ~$26 billion, which would still be the largest pay package for any CEO in history. It’s also more than the total profit Tesla has made over its lifetime (Tesla’s quarterly profits have been dropping for the last couple years, under Musk’s direction).
Despite all of this, and Musk currently holding position as the richest man in the world, the company he runs has been engaging in underhanded marketing efforts to push its new proposed trillion-dollar reward, which would have tangible harms for shareholders and for the company they’re invested in.
Tesla ‘doesn’t do ads,’ but that’s changing for Musk’s $1T
Tesla has long prided itself on not relying on traditional paid advertisements. Instead, it has relied on word of mouth marketing, social media posts, and press coverage of the company’s ambitious promises in order to stay forefront in the public eye. Musk has stated that he “hates advertising” and that running ads is the equivalent of lying (even as he runs ads with lies in them).
But that’s changing. Tesla hired then quickly fired an ad team, but continues to do social media marketing largely on Twitter, the platform that Musk overpaid billions of dollars for and then turned into a white supremacist haven, causing advertisers to flee (who Musk told to leave and then sued to try to force them back).
Of course, given that this is the internet, some of that social media marketing seems to be in the form of bots, so even the word of mouth surrounding Tesla is no longer real.
After chasing away advertisers, Musk resorted to a common tactic of his – channeling money from one of his public companies into one of his private companies, in the form of paid Tesla advertisements.
Most recently, those advertisements have been focused not on marketing Tesla’s products to twitter users, but rather on marketing Musk’s stock award.
In fact, Tesla even recently broke the last bastion of its reluctance towards certain marketing efforts, and started running paid TV ads, but it wasn’t to market the company’s products, rather just to market Musk’s $1 trillion pay package.
Running any ads in the first place for a shareholder vote seems odd – shareholder proposals usually do come alongside a board recommendation, and that’s usually enough to convince shareholders to vote alongside the board (at least, if the board has proven itself to be working in the best interests of the company, which may not apply here).
But it’s exceptionally rare to see a company undertake a whole advertising campaign, with produced videos, paid ads, and an outside strategy firm to help, especially when those ads don’t just target shareholders, but are on platforms for the general public (though this is perhaps a recognition that a huge percentage of Americans own TSLA stock via their retirement plans, whether they purchased the stock themselves or not).
And the ads are… questionable.
Tesla’s marketing effort has been exploitive to say the least
Just about every day, Tesla has filed a new document with the Securities and Exchange Commission detailing another solicitation it has made regarding the upcoming shareholder vote.
Often these are just tweets by the company or by Musk related to the shareholder vote. Musk has made several statements supporting the vote to his millions of followers on the social media app that he purchased so that he could control narratives and quash free speech on it.
Tesla has also purchased several ads on Google, moving beyond just Musk-owned properties.
But these solicitations also include produced videos by the company telling shareholders to vote on it. Two of these ads include testimonials by Tesla employees, stating how Tesla stock improved their lives.
In the videos, the two Tesla employees state that they wouldn’t have been able to own a home if it weren’t for Tesla stock.
One, Kiyoko, invokes her dead father, who would have been proud to see her owning a home.
Another employee, Sarah, invokes her daughter, who couldn’t have had a quinceañera if not for Tesla stock (notably, Musk is also the largest individual funder of a group that is racially profiling Mexican-Americans, staking out high school graduations to break up families and putting pressure on local businesses, including quinceañera dress-sellers).
Put aside for a moment the nightmare scenario where housing is so unaffordable that workers need to feel lucky to be able to afford a place to live after having held a job for 12 years (and apparently are unable afford that house through salary alone, instead needing to rely on a highly overvalued stock to get them there), these emotional statements seem designed to distract from the rational case against this stock award, and to pull on heart strings instead.
They also conflate stock options for the employees that keep Tesla running, and who are counting on those options to help pay for their housing, with an unprecedented stock award for its part-time CEO so he can, uh… bribe more political candidates?
And if you’re wondering how giving the world’s richest man a trillion dollars will help Kiyoko afford a home or Sarah afford a quinceañera, you’re not wrong to wonder. These ought to be two different concepts, but because of the nefarious structure of the shareholder vote, they’re not.
Tesla stock helped employees. Now it can’t, since Elon took it all
One of the questions being asked is whether or not to refill Tesla’s “general share reserve” of shares set aside to be granted to employees as compensation.
Proposal 3 not only fills the general share reserve with 60 million shares as compensation for Tesla’s current and future employees (of which the company currently numbers ~120,000 strong), but also fills a “special share reserve” with nearly 208 million shares for one single part-time employee, Elon Musk, who mostly focuses on companies other than Tesla (and whose interests can be directly opposed to Tesla’s). The board would be able to give these shares, currently worth around $91 billion, to Musk at their discretion without further shareholder approval and is not attached to any milestones, unlike the $1 trillion.
This is one of many issues brought up by several pension funds who named their concerns with the shareholder proposals. Normally, it would seem reasonable to split up the “general” and “special” share reserve votes, but Tesla has seen it fit to combine the two – such that if you want Tesla to be able to compensate employees with shares, you must also accept that Musk will have 3.5x as many shares set aside for him personally as will be set aside for every other employee at the company combined.
It must feel incredibly insulting for the engineers who actually design the cars, the manufacturing associates who build them, the software team that continues to improve the best software out there, the best-in-the-biz charging team, et cetera, to see a guy who spends most of his time working for other companies (or pretending to be good at video games on his private jet) and be told that he’s worth hundreds of thousands of times more than you are.
Even worse, the reason this vote is necessary is because the share reserve was recently drained… to pay Elon Musk.
When Musk’s friends on the Tesla board decided to hand him an “Interim Award” of $26 billion without a shareholder vote, the process through which they did this was to simply award shares to Musk that had previously been set aside in Tesla’s share reserve.
Those shares had been intended to be available for years to come, as compensation for employees, to help Tesla attract and compensate talent (as the heartstring-tugging videos above suggest). But instead, almost the entire reserve was drained to give to Musk, with only one stipulation: that he continue working at Tesla for two years.
But that’s only part of the shares that Musk would get if these shareholder votes pass, because those 208 million shares aren’t even associated with the separate $1 trillion award in Proposal 4, which would include over 423 million shares. So now we’re up to 630+ million shares for Musk (~276B at current TSLA valuation), and only 60 million for every other employee at Tesla combined, being voted on at this shareholder meeting.
And even if proposal 4 is voted down, the board could still give Musk $91 billion worth of stock, and it’s holding employees’ compensation hostage to ensure that it be able to do so.
Musk gets largest payday ever for being a bad employee
The Interim Award was given with the rationale that it might “focus and energize” the CEO, who has been distracted with his running of several other companies and his world famous social media addiction as Tesla earnings and sales have been dropping in an otherwise rising market.
Tesla’s sales drops are largely due to the brand damage Musk himself is doing, and also its lack of innovation under his direction – but at least he can sell some cars to himself to try to hide this failure.
Tesla got saved in Q3 by a pull-forward in demand due to the end of US tax credits (which Musk himself backed, despite that his actions have hurt Tesla in more ways than one), but otherwise its earnings have been trending dangerously close to unprofitability. And that certainly isn’t helped when the CEO spends $288M of his own money to cause a $1.4B drop in Tesla revenue.
Thus, this marks not only the largest payday in the history of the world, but the largest payday given with explicit acknowledgement that the payee is an underperforming and distracted employee, leading the company in a worse direction.
And yet, the board wants shareholders to approve even more pay for that bad employee, and has attached no strings to require he stop distracting himself with other companies, merely hoping that the promise of a large payday will coax Musk into being less terrible at his job than he has recently.
But it has to be an exceptionally large payday if Musk is to complete his goals (and to be clear, they are Musk’s goals, not the company’s), given the inflated nature of TSLA stock.
This is about power… and money
Musk wants this award because he wants more control over Tesla. He has stated clearly many times that he “doesn’t feel comfortable” with his current ownership percentage, even though it’s the result of him continually selling Tesla stock to fund his white supremacist, anti-free-speech project on twitter.
After his many stock sales, his ownership percentage has diluted from around a quarter of the company in 2021 to around 13% today. Musk has threatened Tesla shareholders, saying that that “the future of the world” relies on him getting $1 trillion and that if he doesn’t get 25% of the company he will take AI and robots elsewhere (nevermind that he already has sent Tesla resources to his private company in multiple ways, and wants Tesla shareholders to bail twitter/xAI out, another proposal on the current slate of votes).
Musk having more voting power would protect him from shareholder proposals that seek to improve Tesla’s corporate governance, as several proposals in front of shareholders right now would do. These include modifications to Tesla’s bylaws enabling changes through majority vote rather than supermajority vote, and repealing the threshold requirement to bring derivative actions against the company.
If Musk had 25% of the company, that makes it a lot easier for him to vote a chunk of his shares towards consolidating his power, and makes him less accountable to shareholders who are rightly concerned about Tesla’s current dropping sales and earnings under his direction.
And given that the vote on the current pay package somehow allows Musk to vote his own shares in support of it (unlike the last one, where he was recused), there’s no reason he couldn’t continue to do the same in the future, and have even more opportunity to enrich himself and consolidate power at the cost of all other Tesla shareholders.
(Update: Since this article was first published, Musk now states that the reason he wants more shares is so that he can “control” the “enormous robot army” which he wants Tesla to build. Put aside for the moment whether this is realistic or not, but it does seem perhaps troubling that this guy, who has spent much of the last few years advocating for white supremacy at every turn, wants to control a private army of killer robots, and to be unassailable in his control of that private army such that he cannot be ousted from his position.)
But beyond the power, it’s also about money (as Fred here at Electrek pointed out). If Musk wanted to increase his ownership percentage, he could have Tesla engage in stock buybacks, which would not only decrease dilution for him but also for other shareholders who hold long term. This would also increase share prices, something shareholders might like to see (but then again, it would also require profits, which have tanked recently under Musk’s direction).
Instead, the plan increases dilution for everyone by printing hundreds of millions of shares – dilution for everyone except Musk, who gets far more shares than everyone else combined.
But you better not bring that up, because if so, Tesla might put out a mean tweet about you.
Tesla pays for PR to attack its own shareholders
We covered a group of pension funds who brought up many of these legitimate concerns in a dispassionate letter sent to Tesla investors, including the draining of the share reserve to pay Musk, the negative effect of dilution on current shareholders, and others. The concerns are well-argued and the letter is signed by several public pension funds, whose interest is generally in stable long-term returns, rather than volatility or speculation.
Many public funds are required to invest significantly in funds like the S&P 500, of which TSLA is an outsized member. They are also interested in a generally less volatile economy overall, and thus, it makes sense that they would argue in favor of stability.
The funds also stated that the requirements for various tranches of Musk’s share reward are somewhat arbitrary, and that many could be met easily with creative interpretations. Others have pointed out the same, recognizing even meeting the easiest targets would pay Musk more than the lifetime pay of the next 8 highest-paid CEOs combined.
But after these valid criticisms were lodged, Tesla responded in a way that should not be a surprise for longtime watchers of the company – by doubling down and firing back.
Tesla put out a tweet titled “setting the record straight,” essentially just making the same argument it has already made. It claims that there is no way to creatively interpret product goals, that the board is “disinterested” (that is, they do not hold a personal financial interest in the outcome, which is an odd thing to say about the personal friends and family of Musk on Tesla’s board), and that this plan, which will dilute current shareholders’ holdings in order to retain a bad CEO for the next decade, is “in the interest of shareholders.”
It also claims that none of the operational milestones are “easy” and that previously-cited creative interpretations would not be possible. However, even with only below-average share growth and flat vehicle delivery growth, Tesla is on course to easily reach some of the simpler milestones (well, perhaps this is hard with a CEO who is seemingly doing his best to ruin company performance…), which would still result in a record payday many times over.
And it ends the tweet with a slight against the performance of the various public funds who signed on to the letter. Tesla claims that it has provided much better returns than each of the funds, which have had 6.51%-13.3% annualized returns since 2018. Notably, these are in line with the expected returns that a public fund counts on (with S&P averaging ~8%), who typically invest in stable companies rather than speculating on high-risk investments or tech companies with unheard-of 309:1 P/E ratios (which only gets higher as price goes up and earnings go down).
Since then, proxy advisory group ISS, the largest independent advisor for institutional investors which offers disinterested insight into shareholder proposals, has also recommended against voting for the proposals. Tesla responded by attacking ISS in a tweet.
(Update: Since this article was published, the second largest advisor, Glass Lewis, also issued a sober acknowledgement of what a bad idea these stock proposals are. In response, Musk went on a rant during Tesla’s Q3 earnings call, where the company had announced a huge drop in earnings, despite record revenue, under his poor direction. Musk refused to acknowledge any of the myriad valid points made by ISS or Glass Lewis, and instead repeatedly called them “corporate terrorists”)
Making all of these statements about an active shareholder vote is already a rare move as far as public companies go, but Tesla, which does not advertise, also seems to have retained an outside firm to further publicize its rebuttal. Due to our previous article on this matter, we got an email from FGS Global, which bills itself as “the world’s leading stakeholder strategy firm,” directing our attention to the tweet. We asked FGS why it thought diluting shareholders by $1 trillion was truly the optimal strategy for stakeholders, and did not receive an answer.
Even if you think Musk is necessary, this isn’t Tesla’s best option
Defenders of the plan will argue that shareholders will benefit if share targets are met. But that’s a big “if,” and even if they are met, how much of that can we attribute to the direction of a distracted CEO (with no requirement to not be distracted), and is it really necessary to give that CEO a full trillion dollars worth of dilution in order to get the performance requested?
Again, Musk has already been given the largest payday in history out of shares that were earmarked for employees, and now a payday that’s over thirty times larger than that has been proposed. Even at the inflated share prices that would be necessary to meet milestone targets for the award, shareholders would still have their voting rights and share appreciation diluted by about 12% (and don’t forget the hundreds of millions of shares he can get without doing anything at all, a retroactive reward for his distraction).
Could a similar goal not be achieved with much smaller dilution, say around 1%, which would still be the largest payday ever proposed for a CEO? And is Musk even worth that much to begin with, given his poor recent performance and his behavior that has proven to be hostile to his own company’s interests? (via lobbying for anti-EV policy, doing Tesla brand damage, self-dealing to benefit his own private companies with Tesla’s public assets, firing Tesla’s best teams on an ego trip, and so on)
Heck, even the option of buying xAI in an all-stock deal, at its absurd $200B valuation, would cost Tesla less than these two proposals would (~$276B, at current TSLA valuation). This idea would also do more to ensure Musk’s focus as then he would no longer split his time between his private companies which have his current interest and his public one, since all would be under the same umbrella.
To be clear, that would also be a terrible idea, due to ethical concerns that are currently subject to a lawsuit over Musk conflicts of interest (and surprise surprise, that terrible idea is also up for a shareholder vote). But the fact that there are potential legal problems with each of the options the board did consider is perhaps an indication that another individual, one without such a history of working in his own interests rather than the company’s, would be a better fit for Tesla.
Bad for employees, shareholders, and Tesla’s mission/ethics… so why is Tesla pushing it?
It seems quite clear that the option given to shareholders is not the optimal solution, but due to Tesla’s captured board, it’s the option that’s been put on the table. And since it benefits them (in fact, so much that the board had to return nearly $1 billion in excessive compensation) and their personal friend Elon Musk, it’s the only option shareholders get to vote on.
Were the board interested in Tesla’s best interests, some other options might be on the table. But they aren’t; they’re interested in their friend Elon’s best interests. The driving factor isn’t the goals of Tesla or its shareholders, but the goals of Elon.
If the board were independent and truly interested in Tesla’s best performance, it wouldn’t saddle the company with a hostile CEO for a decade, it wouldn’t overpay that CEO, it would be more sensitive to dilution, it would engage in options that are less likely to result in legal challenges, it would at least ensure that CEO work in the company’s interests, and it would use a more deliberative process than having a few of that CEO’s friends propose a comically large payday just so he can get himself out of the hole he dug for himself with a social media addiction so bad that he overpaid for his favorite app (twice).
The only concessions the board has made to any idea of reasonable governance is that it made the adoption of a succession plan a prerequisite for the last 2 (out of 12) tranches of stock. So Musk can still get ~558 million shares of stock without even giving a thought to what future the company might have with competent corporate governance.
Will shareholders finally reject this ridiculousness?
And yet, shareholders may vote for it, just like last time. That last vote had about the same downsides as this one, but TSLA shareholders voted for it anyway (twice, even after it was revealed they were lied to on the first vote).
But shareholders must currently feel trapped by Musk’s rhetoric. Even though he’s a bad CEO in terms of company performance, his constant overpromising has led to high appreciation of Tesla stock, with the market seeming much more interested in Musk’s constantly-delayed fantasies than in Tesla’s current performance. Essentially, Musk is saying “give me $1 trillion or I won’t lie for you anymore.”
Shareholders are worried that if Musk is gone, the market will no longer overvalue its future performance, and there might be a correction towards more realistic share price levels. Even though a competent CEO might benefit Tesla’s financial performance as a company, it may harm TSLA’s status as a meme stock.
And that’s what this particularly frothy market has become. Rather than investing in a company to focus on its products or even its future, “investors” have become consumers of the stock first, and focused on maintaining whatever illusions have resulted in these absurd price levels. TSLA shareholders have made the wrong decision before on an intrinsically similar issue, so it wouldn’t be a big surprise if they do the same here, only even dumber and ~20x bigger.
It is perhaps heartening that Tesla has seen it necessary to market the award so heavily, as Tesla can see results as they come in.
The more Tesla markets, the more it may suggest that the company may not like the numbers its seeing, and is desperate to swing the vote in its favor. (Either that, or the whole thing is engineered to give Musk something to act victimized about after the fact, when inevitably the award sees legal challenges again.)
For Tesla’s sake, for the EV transition as a whole, and perhaps for the future of the world, let’s hope it’s the former.
The 30% federal solar tax credit is ending this year. If you’ve ever considered going solar, now’s the time to act. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Electricity demand is surging in Texas, and solar, wind, and battery storage are meeting it.
According to new data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), electricity demand across the Texas grid managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) hit record highs in the first nine months of 2025. ERCOT, which supplies power to about 90% of the state, saw demand jump 5% year-over-year to 372 terawatt hours (TWh) – a 23% increase since 2021. No other major US grid has grown faster over the past year.
Solar and wind keep ERCOT’s grid steady
The biggest growth story in Texas power generation is solar. Utility-scale solar plants produced 45 TWh from January through September, up 50% from 2024 and nearly four times what they generated in 2021 (11 TWh). Wind power also continued to climb, producing 87 TWh through September – a 4% increase from last year and 36% more than in 2021.
Together, wind and solar supplied 36% of ERCOT’s total electricity over those nine months. Solar, in particular, has transformed Texas’s daytime energy mix. From June to September, ERCOT solar farms generated an average of 24 gigawatts (GW) between noon and 1 pm – double the midday output from 2023. That growth has pushed down natural gas use at midday from 50% of the mix in 2023 to 37% this year.
Battery storage is filling in the gaps
Batteries charge during the day when wind and solar generation are the highest, and they produce electricity when generation from wind and solar slows down. ERCOT began reporting battery output separately in October 2024 in its hourly grid data, and it’s clear that batteries are now helping to smooth out evening peaks. This past summer, batteries supplied an average of 4 GW of power around 8 pm, right as solar production dropped off.
Natural gas is flatlining
Natural gas is still Texas’s dominant power source, but it isn’t growing like it used to. Between January and September, gas-fired plants generated 158 TWh of electricity, compared to 161 TWh in 2023. Gas comprised 43% of ERCOT’s generation mix during the first nine months of 2025, down from 47% in the first nine months of 2023 and 2024.
More demand growth ahead
The EIA expects Texas electricity demand to keep rising faster than any other grid in the US. In its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook, the EIA projects ERCOT’s demand will climb another 14% in the first nine months of 2026, reaching 425 TWh. That means Texas will need even more solar, wind, and battery storage to keep up with its breakneck growth.
Read more: This $900 million solar farm in Texas is going 100% to data centers
The 30% federal solar tax credit is ending this year. If you’ve ever considered going solar, now’s the time to act. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
GM is recalling nearly 23,000 Chevy Equinox EV and Cadillac Optiq models due to a defect where the tire tread could fall off.
GM is recalling more Chevy Equinox EV models
In a letter sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), GM said it has decided to issue a safety recall for certain Chevy Equinox EV and Cadillac Optiq models from model years 2025 to 2026.
This time, it isn’t necessarily GM’s fault. The vehicles may be equipped with 21″ all-season tires that Continental Tire is recalling.
According to Continental, the tires were produced during the week of October 6, 2024, and may have a defect where the tire tread could partially or fully detach. The records show the defect is due to a nonconforming tread base rubber compound.
Owners of affected vehicles may notice unusual tread wear or bulging, vibration while driving, or tire noises. GM is unaware of any incidents related to the defect, but is issuing the recall out of an abundance of caution.
On September 18, 2025, GM inspected the assembly plant and confirmed there were no suspect tires in stock. The 21″ tires come standard on RS trims and are optional on LT1 and LT2 grades.
Although GM is recalling 22,914 Chevy Equinox EVs and Cadillac Optiqs, it estimates that only about 1% of them have the defect.
The recall includes:
- 2026 Cadillac Optiq: 214
- 2026 Chevy Equinox EV: 1,832
- 2025 Cadillac Optiq: 3,468
- 2025 Chevy Equinox EV: 17,400
GM dealers will check all four tires and replace them if needed, free of charge. Dealers were notified on October 16. Owner notification letters are expected to be mailed out on December 1, 2025.
You can contact Chevrolet’s customer service number at 1-800-222-1020 or Cadillac’s at 1-800-333-4223. GM’s recall number is N252525030. Owners can also call the NHTSA hotline at 1-888-327-4236 or visit the nhtsa.gov website for more information.
The Chevy Equinox EV is now the third best-selling EV in the US, trailing only the Tesla Model Y and Model 3. Meanwhile, Cadillac’s entry-level Optiq SUV is the fifth-most-popular luxury EV. The recall is minor and only affects a small percentage of models, so it’s not expected to have a major impact.
If you want to test one of them for yourself, we can help you get started. Check out our links below to find available Chevy Equinox EV and Cadillac Optiq models near you.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024