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Tesla has launched a new website aimed at convincing shareholders to vote for reinstating Elon Musk’s $55 billion compensation plan.

Back in 2018, Tesla shareholders approved one of the biggest compensation plans of all-time: a $55 billion fully stock-based CEO compensation plan for Elon Musk.

In January, a judge sided with lawyers representing a Tesla shareholder alleging that Tesla’s board misrepresented the compensation package when presenting it to shareholders.

It’s a complicated issue, but in short, the judge found that Tesla’s board and Musk didn’t play by the rules of a public company when it presented the plan to shareholders.

The judge found that Tesla had governance issues when coming up with the compensation plan and those issues were not communicated to shareholders before voting on the plan.

Instead, Tesla claimed that the plan was negotiated by “independent board members” when it was found that some board directors had personal financial dealings with Musk outside of Tesla, amongst other things.

The Delaware court found that this invalidated the vote, and therefore, Tesla had to rescind the compensation plan.

Yesterday, Tesla told shareholders that it will ask them to vote on moving Tesla’s state of incorporation to Texas and then revote for Musk’s compensation plan without changing anything.

Now, Tesla has launched a new website called ‘SupportTeslaValue.com‘ to convince shareholders to vote for the package again.

The website opens up by claiming that giving the shares to Musk will “protect your investment and Tesla’s future”:

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Most of the website is dedicated to the fact that the compensation plan was aligned with shareholders’ interests, super ambitious, and actually achieved the goals in the plan despite being super ambitious.

Virtually everyone can agree with all of that, but it’s not really what led the package to be rescinded.

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The interests were aligned, but the judge did question the need for such a high compensation when Musk already owned more than 20% of Tesla at the time.

From the judge’s decision:

At a high level, the “6% for $600 billion” argument has a lot of appeal. But that appeal quickly fades when one remembers that Musk owned 21.9% of Tesla when the board approved his compensation plan. This ownership stake gave him every incentive to push Tesla to levels of transformative growth—Musk stood to gain over $10 billion for every $50 billion in market capitalization increase. Musk had no intention of leaving Tesla, and he made that clear at the outset of the process and throughout this litigation. Moreover, the compensation plan was not conditioned on Musk devoting any set amount of time to Tesla because the board never proposed such a term. Swept up by the rhetoric of “all upside,” or perhaps starry eyed by Musk’s superstar appeal, the board never asked the $55.8 billion question: Was the plan even necessary for Tesla to retain Musk and achieve its goals?

But the real issue is how the plan came about. The judge found that Musk was in control of Tesla and the board – leading to irregularities and how the plan was put together and negotiated.

That’s at the core of the judge decision and Tesla doesn’t really address it in its new SEC proxy statement and this new website.

This is the only section that sort of addresses it:

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However, the testimonies from the Tesla board members, Musk, and everyone involved, led the judge to believe the work from the board wasn’t really “robust”.

For example, Todd Maron, a lawyer who represented Musk and formerly was his divorce lawyer, became Tesla’s general counsel when this plan was being negotiated:

The process leading to the approval of Musk’s compensation plan was deeply flawed. Musk had extensive ties with the persons tasked with negotiating on Tesla’s behalf. He had a 15-year relationship with the compensation committee chair, Ira Ehrenpreis. The other compensation committee member placed on the working group, Antonio Gracias, had business relationships with Musk dating back over 20 years, as well as the sort of personal relationship that had him vacationing with Musk’s family on a regular basis. The working group included management members who were beholden to Musk, such as General Counsel Todd Maron who was Musk’s former divorce attorney and whose admiration for Musk moved him to tears during his deposition. In fact, Maron was a primary gobetween Musk and the committee, and it is unclear on whose side Maron viewed himself. Yet many of the documents cited by the defendants as proof of a fair process were drafted by Maron.

That alone is a weird thing: having your divorce lawyer become your auto company’s general counsel.

The judge also argued that the board didn’t really negotiate the deal proposed by Musk. They made a few changes to align it with Tesla’s internal goals, but the judge believed the change couldn’t be described as “concessions” by Musk:

In this litigation, the defendants touted as concessions certain features of the compensation plan—a five-year holding period, an M&A adjustment, and a 12- tranche structure that required Tesla to increase market capitalization by $100 billion more than Musk had initially proposed to maximize compensation under the plan. But the holding period was adopted in part to increase the discount on the publicly disclosed grant price, the M&A adjustment was industry standard, and the 12-tranche structure was reached in an effort to translate Musk’s fully-diluted-share proposal to the board’s preferred total-outstanding-shares metric. It is not accurate to refer to these terms as concessions.

Tesla shareholders are going to vote on the plan again in June, along with the move to Texas and the re-election of two board members, including Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk.

Electrek’s Take

Before voting, Tesla shareholders should look at more than the proxy and Tesla’s new website.

You should really read the judge’s decision, which includes excerpts from testimonies from basically everyone involved. It does undoubtedly paint the most accurate picture of how the plan came about – certainly more than the board saying they met 15 times to discuss this plan.

That’s all I’m asking. Read the judge’s decision.

Here’s the judge’s decision in full:

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Honda’s super low-cost electric motorcycle revealed in new patent images

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Honda's super low-cost electric motorcycle revealed in new patent images

Honda’s patent filings offer a clear glimpse into the company’s plans for an ultra-affordable electric motorcycle, integrating a proven chassis with a simple electric powertrain. It’s a clear glimpse into how the world’s most prolific motorcycle maker plans to challenge the nascent electric motorcycle market.

The filings in Honda’s new patent show a bike built around the familiar platform of the Honda Shine 100, a best-selling commuter in India, reimagined in electric form for a cost-effective future of urban mobility.

According to Cycle World’s Ben Purvis, Honda’s patent sketches outline a design that repurposes the Shine’s sturdy frame and chassis mounting points to house an electric motor and compact battery setup. Positioned where the engine once sat, a mid-motor drives the rear wheel via a single-speed reduction gear and chain – mirroring the essentials of the original gasoline-powered commuter bike.

Instead of a traditional fuel tank, the design features two lithium-ion battery packs, angled forward on either side of the spine frame and fitting neatly into the existing geometry.

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What makes the bike revealed in this patent even more interesting isn’t just its clever packaging, but rather the platform. By leveraging the proven Shine chassis, Honda can significantly cut development costs, manufacturing complexity, and market price. That’s a big statement given that surviving in price-sensitive markets like India demands simplicity and reliability. And by piggybacking off a proven platform, Honda can dramatically reduce the time to market from the time the boardroom bigwigs give the project the final green light.

Honda’s patent images show an electric motorcycle built on the same platform as the Honda Shine 100

The design still seems to feature styling that would be fairly consistent with the Shine 100, even down to a gas cap-like circular protrusion likely on top of a faux-tank. Some electric motorcycles in the past have used this location to hide a charging port, keeping similar form and function to outdated fuel tanks and fill ports, though it’s not clear if that is Honda’s intention.

It’s not clear what power level Honda could be targeting, but the Shine bike from which Honda’s creation draws its design inspiration could provide some clues. The Honda Shine 100 features a 99cc engine that provides around 7.3 horsepower (around 5.5 kW) and has a top speed of 85 km/h (53 mph), solidly planting it in the commuter segment of motorcycles.

The electric motorcycle in Honda’s design would be unlikely to target much higher performance as it would drastically increase the required battery capacity, and thus similar speeds of around 80-85 km/h (50-53 mph) would seem likely.

There also appears to be no active cooling, which would also limit the amount of power that Honda would be likely to draw continuously. The patent describes a channel formed by the two battery packs, leading to the speed controller and creating ducted cooling that pulls heat out of the batteries and electronics without drawing extra power.

Honda hasn’t released a final design, but I ask AI to create one based on the patent images. I’d ride that!

This emerging design is just one piece of Honda’s broader electric two-wheeler strategy. Their entry-level EM1 e: and Activa e: scooters launched with mobile battery packs and budget-friendly pricing. Meanwhile, high-tech concepts continually push the envelope. But this Shine-based bike aims squarely at the heart of mainstream affordability – a move likely to resonate with millions of new electric riders in developing regions like India where traditionally-styled small-dsiplacement motorcycles reign supreme.

Honda hasn’t revealed a timeline or pricing yet, but Honda’s patents offer real hope to fans of the brand’s electric efforts. If scaled effectively, this could be the first truly mass-market electric motorcycle from a major OEM, with a sticker price likely far below the $5,000 mark usually seen as a floor for commuter electric motorcycles from major manufacturers. That would also dramatically undercut models from brands like Zero or Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire, even as those brands rush to bring their own lower-cost models to market.

Electrek’s Take

Honda’s patent reveals a clever, no-frills EV designed to democratize electric two-wheeling, especially in developing markets that are even more price-sensitive than Western electric motorcycle customers.

Using a trusted frame, simple electric drive, and passive cooling, I’d say it definitely prioritizes cost over complexity, which is exactly what urban commuters need. If Honda can bring this to market, it would not just add another electric bike to the mix… it could create a new baseline for affordability in affordable electric mobility. Now we’re just waiting for the rubber to hit the road!

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Musk will ask Tesla shareholders to vote on bailout for twitter/xAI

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Musk will ask Tesla shareholders to vote on bailout for twitter/xAI

Tesla shareholders will vote on whether to invest into xAI, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s private company, according to a post by Musk on twitter today.

Elon Musk is not just the CEO of Tesla, the electric car company that you may have heard about from time to time in Electrek’s coverage, but several other companies as well. And, famously, Musk companies often share resources – there has been much talk of incorporating SpaceX technology into Tesla vehicles, and putting xAI/twitter’s “MechaHitler”…. er, I mean, “Grok”…. feature into Tesla cars, among other collaborations that have happened over his various companies’ histories.

And today, Musk made it official that he will seek greater collaboration between three of his companies: Tesla, xAI, and twitter, in the form of an investment into xAI by Tesla.

The situation is a little more complicated than that, though.

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Tesla is a public company, owned by shareholders. Musk is the largest shareholder, but only owns around 12% of the company himself.

This is a different situation than xAI, which is a private company, owned by Musk. While there are other investors, he can exercise much more direct control over the company, and doesn’t have to put big decisions up to a vote.

One of the recent decisions he made with xAI was to purchase twitter in March. You may say, “wait, I thought he bought twitter back in 2022?,” and you’d be correct. Musk purchased twitter for $44 billion in 2022, which was widely agreed to be far too high a price, and then rapidly saw the company’s valuation drop to under $10 billion.

Then, in March 2025, Musk had xAI purchase twitter in an all-stock deal, valuing twitter company at $45 billion – again, far too high of a valuation, but considering he purchased the company from himself, he could set the price at whatever he wanted.

The move was widely considered to be a bailout of twitter, and the numbers involved considered arbitrary, perhaps partially to help save face for Musk after he made one of the worst business deals of all time.

Now the two are the same entity, and it seems clear that he would like to bring Tesla into the fold, in some way or another.

Musk has already improperly used resources from Tesla, a public company, to boost xAI and twitter, his private companies. Last year, he gave up Tesla’s priority position for highly sought-after NVIDIA H100 GPUs, instead shipping those GPUs to xAI and twitter. Tesla could have used these GPUs for training its FSD/Robotaxi systems, which Musk has claimed is the most important thing to Tesla’s future, but instead graciously sent them to his other company that used them to, uh, train a bot to say Nazi stuff apparently.

xAI has also poached talent from Tesla, multiple times, showing how Musk is using Tesla as a farm team for his private company.

So it hasn’t been a secret that Musk would like to use public money to bail out his private companies, as he’s been setting the stage for for a while now.

Musk has previously “discussed” getting Tesla to invest in xAI in the past, but the idea was never made official until today, when Musk said that he will put the idea to a shareholder vote.

In response to one of his superfans asking for the the opportunity to waste money on an overvalued social media app (which would mark the third time it has been overpaid for in as many years), and the backend fueling “MechaHitler,” Musk said this:

Tesla traditionally holds its annual shareholder meeting around the middle of the year, so if it were a normal year, this shareholder vote might be imminent.

But it’s not a normal year, as just last week Tesla announced an exceptionally late shareholder meeting, pushing it back to November, the latest it has ever held the meeting.

This means that Musk will have around four months to campaign for this idea – something that he’ll perhaps have more time to do, now that he’s no longer cosplaying as a government official.

We don’t know what the structure of the deal might look like yet, but Musk has been clear in the past that he wants more shares in Tesla. After selling many of his shares in order to buy twitter, he later complained that he doesn’t feel comfortable having less than 25% of Tesla. Given that his recent xAI/twitter deal was an all-stock deal, Musk could attempt to fund any investment of Tesla into xAI via shares, giving himself more Tesla shares in exchange for the company gaining a portion of xAI. Though to get him to 25% voting shares in Tesla, that would require either an enormous valuation for xAI, a small valuation for Tesla, or purchasing a large percentage of xAI (or, perhaps, all three, given how much higher TSLA’s valuation is than xAI’s).

We may however have a hint as to how that vote will go, because the last time Musk campaigned for a clearly terrible idea, Tesla shareholders ate it up.

In mid-2024, Musk ended his yearslong absenteeism at Tesla in a flurry of activity, hoping to persuade enough shareholders to vote for his illegal $55B pay package.

That flurry involved firing 10% of the company (supposedly in order to save money – though Tesla’s earnings have dropped drastically since), including important leadership and successful teams, which caused chaos with Tesla’s projects. He also pushed back an all-important affordable car project (which we’ve still heard nothing about) and held Tesla’s AI projects hostage while shifting both resources and staff from Tesla to his private AI company, even as he claims that AI is the future of Tesla.

In the end, these bad decisions worked, and shareholders voted to give their bad CEO his $55B pay package, even though it was later ruled to still be illegal.

So it looks like we’ve got another campaign coming up, and if last time was any indication, expect some really bad decisions along the way. It worked last time, didn’t it?


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E-quipment highlight: Perkins TracStar battery electric power unit

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E-quipment highlight: Perkins TracStar battery electric power unit

The off-highway equipment experts at Perkins and McElroy have teamed up to develop a plug-and-play battery electric power unit designed to help equipment OEMs and upfitters to seamlessly transition from diesel to battery electric power.

Designed to occupy the same space as the companies’ diesel-engined power units, Perkins dropped its new battery power unit into the similarly new McElroy TracStar 900i pipe fusion machine (specialized equipment used to join thermoplastic pipes like HDPE or polypropylene by heat-welding them end-to-end to form a continuous length pf pipe).

Perkins’ battery electric power unit replaces the company’s proprietary 134 hp, 3.6 liter 904 Series Tier V diesel engine, enabling units that are already deployed to be quickly upgraded to electric power – and helping trade allies and development partners to easily retrofit existing equipment in order to add zero-emission options to their operational fleet.

“We’re actively helping customers navigate the shift in power system requirements, with a range of advanced power systems including electric, diesel-electric and alternative fuel compatible engines,” says Jaz Gill, vice president, global sales, marketing at Perkins. “When it comes to the innovative fully integrated battery electric power unit, it can be ‘dropped in’ to a machine to replace a diesel engine. The system consists of a Perkins battery along with inverters, motors and on-board chargers – all packaged up into a compact drop-in system to support seamless transition from diesel to electric for our customers looking to make that move.”

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McElroy believes that an electric, emissions-free power unit like this one will open new opportunities and applications for its customers.

“Their team has done a phenomenal job of integrating their battery electric system into our TracStar 900i,” explains McElroy President and CEO Chip McElroy. “We’re really excited to see what the market thinks about this concept.”

Development of the battery electric powered pipe fusion machine was completed in about nine months. Future Perkins-powered electric equipment running the 904 diesel (small excavators, telehandlers, pumps, and gensets) could be developed even more quickly. You can find out more in the company’s promo video, below.

Perkins electric power unit


SOURCE | IMAGES: McElroy, Perkins.

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