Is Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar pay day a nonstarter?

To become a trillionaire, Musk and Tesla must cross some pretty high bars. Can they succeed?

Elon Musk is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire as Tesla shareholders have approved the biggest executive compensation package in global history.

However, to claim these riches, Musk must stay at the helm, be fully vested in the company and achieve some very tough milestones – goals that could be out of reach and may threaten his bumper pay cheque.

Over the course of the next decade, and under Musk’s guidance, Tesla must:

·       Sell 20 million electric vehicles

·       Sell 10 million ‘full self-driving’ subscriptions

·       Sell 1 million humanoid ‘Optimus’ robots

·       Deploy 1 million ‘robo-taxis’ into commercial use

Is this feasible? Let’s consider:

Selling 20 million electric vehicles

Tesla are notoriously vague when it comes to vehicle sales data, but various sources suggest that the company has sold a maximum of 8.46 million vehicles in the period Q1 2013 to Q3 2025. To meet the new sales goal, the business will need to sell more than double this number in a shorter time frame, even as global competition in EV intensifies and Tesla sales come under pressure. For example, China, one of Tesla’s biggest markets, is turning away from the US manufacturer, preferring to buy cheaper, home grown EV products from booming brands such as BYD and Geely.

Additionally, the range of EV products from other automakers such as Toyota, Hyundai, VW and Honda continues to expand, pushing Tesla into a race to develop more and more new products, hopefully without repeating the disaster known as the Cyber Truck.

Coming from an annual sales history of less than 1 million units to reach 2 million sales per year every year for the next ten years is a big ask. Without the introduction of a vehicle that has the sales impact of the original VW beetle or the mighty Toyota Camry, it seems unlikely that Tesla can overcome the many market forces set against it.

Selling 10 million full self-driving (FSD) subscriptions

Sales info on Tesla FSD is also hard to find. However, in October 2025, Tesla’s CFO Vaibhav Taneja disclosed that the “paid customer base” for FSD is about 12% of Tesla’s vehicle fleet. If we extrapolate this percentage over 20 million vehicle sales, it delivers 2.4 million subscriptions; not even a quarter of the proposed 10 million.

Additionally, YipitData estimates reported by Electrek highlight that only about 2% of FSD free-trial users converted to paying subscriptions or purchases as of May 2024. Ramping this modest level of take-up to 50% of all car sales will be challenging.

Selling 1 million humanoid Optimus robots

Elon Musk and Tesla describe Optimus as a key future product and claim it could account for 80% of Tesla’s value in the long run. The robots are currently performing basic internal tasks in Tesla factories (e.g., moving batteries around) while Tesla’s own and third-party reports talk about producing thousands of robots in 2025 and scaling to 50,000+ per year. However, these are production plans, not sales.

Recent articles are explicit that Optimus is “still in development”, with broader commercial availability expected from 2026 onwards.

To date, Tesla has sold zero Optimus robots in the open market. However, if the product becomes good enough and useful enough and enough people can get past the obvious ‘killer robot in my house’ paranoia, it may be feasible to reach average annual sales of 100,000 or more by 2035.

Deploying 1 million robotaxis commercially

Tesla’s robo-taxi service launched in Austin, Texas on June 22, 2025 in a limited, invitation-only programme.  The initial fleet is very small; roughly 10–20 Model Y vehicles running in a geofenced area, each with a human “safety monitor” in the driver's seat.

Musk has talked about expanding to more cities and ramping the fleet to around 1,500 robo-taxis by the end of 2025. This is a very long way from the +100,000 deployments per year that will be needed to reach the 1 million goal by 2035.

Union and trade resistance to robo-taxis is already strong in prime markets such as London, Paris and Berlin, and lengthy trials are demanded to ensure operational safety. This means it could be years before Tesla's autonomous taxis are cruising the cities that Musk must conquer to meet his lofty sales expectations. Furthermore, a 2019 survey estimated that there were around 18 million taxis in the world. This figure has certainly increased since then as ride-hailing from firms like Uber has become entrenched in many countries. Based on this estimate, Tesla will need to replace around 5% of the globe's human-operated taxis with robo-taxis to meet their 1,000,000 units target.

The final word

The decks seem stacked against Musk’s trillion dollar pay day, although with his deep pockets and the current pace of AI development, nothing can be casually dismissed.

Ultimately, success for Tesla’s ambitions rests on continuing high demand from consumers, slow or poor response from competitors, relaxed regulations in key markets and a greater acceptance of robotics in our homes, shops, factories and forms of public transport.

Lucky as he seems to be, it’s difficult to imagine that all those dominos will fall Musk’s way.

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