Elon Musk tries to explain his ask for more control over Tesla, but TSLA not buying it
Elon Musk tried to explain his strange ask for more control over Tesla, which seemingly came with a threat to divert AI products from the automaker to his new startup, during his earnings conference call.
It doesn’t look like Tesla shareholders are buying it as the stock crashed by as much as 10% this morning.
Last week, we reported on Musk bizarrely asking for a 25% voting control over Tesla because of his fear that some entity could take over the company to control its AI projects.
He warned that without this level of control, he would “prefer to build products outside of Tesla”. Musk owns an AI startup called xAI, which has made some Tesla shareholders uncomfortable since the CEO also describes Tesla as an “AI/robotics company.
By saying that, Musk is basically confirming that he has a conflict of interest between Tesla and xAI. You could even make the argument that he is breaking his fiduciary duty to Tesla investors.
Shareholders asked Tesla if they should be worried about Musk’s comments. Over 4,000 Tesla retail investors voted for the question to come up during Tesla’s earnings call yesterday.
Musk tried to explain his position:
Let me explain why. What my concern is here, which is that, you know, I see a path to creating an artificial intelligence and robotics juggernaut of truly immense capability and power. And my concern would be I don’t want to control it, but if I have so little influence over the company at that stage that I could sort of be voted out by some sort of random shareholder advisory firm.
The CEO added:
You know, we’ve had a lot of challenges with Institutional Shareholder Services, ISS. I call them ISIS and Glass Lewis, you know, which there’s a lot of activists that basically infiltrate those organizations and have, you know, strange ideas about what should be done. So, you know. I want to have enough to be influential – like, if we could do a dual class stock, that would be ideal. I’m not looking for additional economics; I just want to be an effective steward of very powerful technology. And the reason I just sort of roughly picked approximately 25% was that -that’s not so much that I can control the company even if I go bonkers. And if I’m, like, mad, they can throw me out, but it’s enough that I have a strong influence. That’s what I’m aiming for – a strong influence but not control. There’s some way to achieve that, that would be great.
For Musk to get 25% voting control, he would need to receive a stock package worth about $60 billion. He says that he doesn’t want more money, just voting control, but dual-class voting shares are not really possible to structure post-IPO.
More shares would appear to be the only way for Musk to get more control over Tesla after he sold billions worth to acquire Twitter.
Tesla’s stock crashed as much as 10% this morning following Tesla’s earnings.
Electrek’s Take
Let me start by stating the obvious: no one currently has more control over Tesla than Elon Musk. He is the CEO and largest shareholder.
Secondly, he will gain even more control as he exercises more shares from his previous compensation plan.
ISS companies have tried some shareholder activism at Tesla, but they have been extremely unsuccessful for the most part. It’s ridiculous to compare their intentions to a terrorist organization, but even if you forget about their intentions, there are serious doubts about their effectiveness in affecting Tesla in any serious way in the first place.
They are certainly not a reason to give 25% control over Tesla to Musk. Even if it was, it doesn’t really answer the bigger problem: the conflict of interest Musk has between Tesla and xAI, which I think was more what the shareholders were asking about.
Musk didn’t even address that at all in his comments.
The most ridiculous thing about this whole situation and how Tesla is reacting to it, or more accurately not reacting to it, is that it shows how much control Musk currently has over Tesla.
If Tesla wasn’t under his control all the way up to the board, the Tesla board would have already, at the very least, commented on the situation. They haven’t. The CEO is publicly saying that he would prefer building products outside of the company without a 25% voting control and crickets from the board. It’s wild. Only at Tesla.
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Environment
Trump meme coin dinner likely to include mostly non-Americans based on top $TRUMP holders
Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images
With President Donald Trump’s private dinner for top meme coin holders less than a week away, the leaderboard is awash with crypto wallets that are effectively anonymous.
On May 22, the top 220 $TRUMP holders are invited to a dinner with the president at his Virginia golf club outside of Washington, D.C. The event was announced last month, and the tally closed Monday night.
The nature of the pseudonymous wallets raises questions about the true identities and motivations of the token’s largest holders, who have bought a seat at the table with a U.S. president.
Documents from blockchain analytics firm Inca Digital that were reviewed by CNBC show where the top 275 $TRUMP token holders send and receive the token. Many are heavily tied to international exchanges like Binance that don’t service U.S. customers, an indication that they’re likely not U.S. citizens.
An analysis by Bloomberg revealed that 19 of the top 25 wallets are almost certainly owned by individuals operating outside the U.S.
Justin Sun, who openly shared that he bought $75 million worth of the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial token — a digital coin where 75% of proceeds go to Trump-related entities — is believed to be at the top of the $TRUMP meme token leaderboard.
Sun, who was born in China, is the crypto entrepreneur behind the Tron blockchain and is in talks with the SEC to resolve civil fraud charges.
A wallet called Sun currently holds more than $18 million worth of $TRUMP, with $4.5 million bought after the dinner contest announcement, according to Bloomberg.
Multiple reports point to the wallet being tied to the Tron founder. A representative for Sun didn’t respond to CNBC’s request for comment or confirm whether Sun is the wallet owner.
MemeCore, a Singapore-based crypto network that was vocal in its quest to secure a spot at the Trump dinner, landed in second place with an investment of $18 million. An Australian crypto entrepreneur also reportedly made the cut.
The leaderboard points to the token’s extreme volatility.
Inca Digital told CNBC that while 560,376 wallets have made a combined $5.2 billion in realized gains on the $TRUMP token, an even larger number — 592,962 wallets — have collectively lost $3.9 billion.
The figures underscore the massive wealth transfer within Trump’s crypto ecosystem, where early buyers have seen windfalls while the majority have suffered losses.
Chainalysis and Elliptic, two leading blockchain analytics firms, initially tracked $TRUMP token movements and trading fees. But days after CNBC published a story on the number of crypto wallets that had lost money on the meme coin, the firms said they were too busy with existing clients to continue blockchain analysis of the president’s self-branded meme token.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the ranking member of the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, warned that the Trump family’s growing crypto holdings may serve as a backdoor for foreign and corporate interests seeking access to the president.
Freight Technologies, a Houston-based logistics firm that trades on the Nasdaq and has a market cap of just over $2.3 million, bought $2 million worth of the $TRUMP tokens to influence U.S.-Mexico trade policy, according to a release. CEO Javier Selgas described the move as a strategic push to “champion fair and free trade” across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Freight Technologies finished in 250th place, missing the cut for the dinner.
Tesla is now pulling on all the demand levers in the US with new discounts and incentives as sales are crashing due to brand damage.
Over the last few days, Tesla has introduced a series of new discounts and incentives in the US.
Previously, Tesla had a program to offer a $1,000 discount for US military personnel, but the automaker has now extended it to “students, teachers, first-responders, military veterans, retirees, active-duty members, their spouses, and surviving spouses.”
The update incentive applies to Tesla’s entire lineup of new vehicles.
Tesla also introduced a new incentive for Lyft drivers. They are eligible to $1,000 in Tesla credits when taking delivery and $1,000 from Lyft if they complete 100 deliveries by July 13.
The automaker wrote on its website:
Eligible Lyft drivers who purchase a new Tesla vehicle can receive $1,0001 in Tesla Credits upon taking delivery and a $1,000 incentive from Lyft after completing 100 trips on or before July 13, 2025. Tesla Credits can be used toward Supercharging, a new Tesla vehicle, service appointments or select Tesla Shop or upgrade purchases. Offer available to active Lyft drivers in good standing.
Tesla also started reaching out to Cybertruck reservation holders to let them know that they only have a month before they can’t take advantage of lower FSD prices.
The automaker wrote in the email:
As an early reservation holder, you have access to a reserved Full Self-Driving (Supervised) price of $7,000. To keep this price, you’ll need to take delivery by June 15, 2025. After June 15, 2025, FSD (Supervised) will be available at the latest price, which is currently $8,000.
When Tesla started taking Cybertruck reservations in 2019, Tesla said that by reserving the truck, reservation holders were locking in the then $7,000 price for its ‘Full Self-Driving’ package.
It looks like Tesla is now putting a deadline to take advantage of this deal to boost orders of the Cybertruck, which has proven to be a commercial flop.
On top of all these incentives, Tesla is also subsidizing interest rates to offer 0% financing on Model 3, and 1.99% financing on Model Y.
All those incentives in place point to Tesla having significant demand issues in the US.
Tesla’s global sales came about 50,000 units below expectations, which the company blamed on the production changeover of Model Y, its most popular model by far.
However, production is now back up to normal in Q2, and Tesla is clearly having issues selling the updated Model Y.
The automaker has no backlog of orders for the new Model Y and vehicles are already piling up in inventory:
We reported last week that Tesla employees wrote an open letter calling for Elon Musk’s removal as CEO due to the damage he has caused to the brand.
In the letter, the employees confirmed Tesla’s demand issues, saying that thousands of new Model Ys are now sitting unsold on lots in the US.
Electrek’s Take
This is not a great sign for Tesla. These are end-of-quarter level incentives when we are just about halfway through the quarter.
And that’s just in the US, where Tesla’s sale performance is more opaque.
In Europe and China, where we know for a fact that Tesla is struggling with sales, the automaker is virtually offering 0% financing on its entire lineup.
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The electric box van experts at Harbinger announced a new, EREV version of their medium-duty van that pairs a big battery with a small, gas-powered ICE engine to offer fleets that are hesitant to electrify a massive 500 miles of autonomy on a single charge + tank.
The American truck brand is putting its latest $100 million raise to good use, developing a cost-competitive EREV chassis that marries a low-emissions 1.4L inline four-cylinder gas engine with a close coupled 800V generator sending power to a 140 or 175 kW battery for up to 500 miles of fully loaded range. More than enough, in other words, to meet the needs of just about any fleet you can think of.
That’s a good thing, too, because medium-duty trucks are put to work in just about any circumstance you can think of, as well – a fact that’s not lost on Harbinger.
“Medium-duty vehicles serve an incredibly diverse range of applications, just like the fleets and operators that rely on them, ” explains John Harris, Co-founder and CEO, Harbinger. “There are some fleets whose needs simply can’t be met with a purely electric vehicle—and we recognize that. Our hybrid is designed for use cases and routes that go beyond what an all-electric system typically supports. The series hybrid delivers the benefits of an electric drivetrain, along with the added confidence of a range extender when needed.”
In addition an up-front cost that should make it an attractive prospect for fleet buyers, the new Harbinger EREV pack performance that should made it attractive for its drivers, too. The new chassis’ electric powertrain delivers 440 hp and 1,140 lb-ft of tq for quick acceleration into traffic and smooth running, even under load. Charging performance is also quick, with the ability to get the big battery from 10-80% charge in just under an hour on a 150 kW port.
You’ve heard all this before
If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is. This medium-duty chassis was first shown last year, making its debut under a Thor Class A motorhome concept that we covered in September. That vehicle promised the same great EREV range and capability to a market that values independence and spontaneity more than most, and bringing those values to a medium-duty commercial market that’s lapping up “messy middle” propaganda from Shell NACFE is just smart business.
The new Harbinger chassis’ batteries are manufactured by Panasonic. No word on who is making the 1.4L ICE generator, but my money’s on the GM SGE four-cylinder last seen in the gas-powered Chevy Spark. You guys are smart, though – if you have a better guess who the supplier might be, let us know in the comments.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Harbinger.
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