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Tesla's Musk Paid $70,000 Salary In 2013

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk was paid just under $70,000 in 2013. But he could be in line for much, much more. According to a Tesla filing with regulators Thursday, Musk made a base salary of $33,280 in 2013. That was the minimum he was required to make under California law. He got an additional $36,709 in company bonuses. Tesla says Musk, the billionaire founder of PayPal and rocket-building company SpaceEx, only accepts $1 and returns the rest to the company. Musk could someday rake in much more from the company he helped found in 2003. Under a compensation package approved in 2012, Musk was awarded options to buy nearly 5.3 million shares of Tesla stock at $31.17 each. The stock closed Thursday at $207.86, making those shares worth about $900 million. The plan is supposed to compensate Musk over a 10-year period, but only if the company meets performance goals. Musk can't exercise all the shares, for example, unless Tesla's shares reach a total value of $43.2 billion. The company's shares are currently worth $25.6 billion. Musk would also have to meet milestones for production of Tesla's planned Model X electric SUV and its Generation Three vehicle, which will cost around $35,000. Right now, Tesla only makes the Model S sedan, which starts at $70,000. Tesla said in its filing that some incremental stock value goals have been achieved, but the operational milestones, while probable, have not been reached, so none of Musk's shares have vested. Related Gallery Tesla Model S Wins Coveted 'Car Of The Year' Awards

FTC officials question 'bad policy' that stops Tesla's direct sales

It looks like Elon Musk has a new group of allies over at the Federal Trade Commission. Writing on the FTC blog, three high-level FTC officials came out against the "protectionist" network of laws in the US that govern automotive dealers and prevent, in some cases, Tesla Motors from selling its cars directly to customers. They called the rules, "bad policy for a number of reasons." They write: [The legal] protections expanded until in many states they included outright bans on the sale of new cars by anyone other than a dealer-specifically, an auto manufacturer. Instead of "protecting," these state laws became "protectionist," perpetuating one way of selling cars-the independent car dealer. The post is not a call to arms, but more of a position statement co-authored by Andy Gavil (director of the Office of Policy Planning), Debbie Feinstein (director of the Bureau of Competition), and Marty Gaynor (director of the Bureau of Economics). "The collective [cost] impact of [the state-by-state battles] is one of the major concerns here. [Tesla is] just trying to sell their cars" – Andy Gavin Gavil told AutoblogGreen that the main goal was to bring attention to the issue, which the post has certainly done. There are so many of state fights going on, he said, that this was a way to reach a lot of people at once. "We've been watching this for months," he said. "It's very clearly a state-by-state battle. We are concerned about Tesla litigating state-by-state. The collective [cost] impact of that is one of the major concerns here. They're just trying to sell their cars. The way the industry is reacting shows that it's about more than that." Gavil wouldn't go so far as to say that there should be new national rules – it's up to Congress to do that, he said - but he has also been looking at the taxi industry and the upstarts like Lyft and Uber. The competition angle sometimes doesn't get the attention it deserves, he said. "If there's a more open debate about it, that can only be a good thing." One of the groups opposed to Tesla's direct sales is the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), which represents 16,000 new car and truck dealerships with about 32,000 domestic and international franchises.

How does Tesla Model S P85D acceleration compare in Sport vs. Insane mode?

Drag Times has gone and measured the Tesla Model S P85D against... itself. The electric, all-wheel-drive sedan has two modes, Sport and Insane, so Drag Times found a lonely stretch of road, lashed up a Vbox and compared the acceleration in each mode. The results were everything we've been promised: 3.17 seconds from 0 to 60 miles per hour in Insane mode, 4.04 seconds in Sport. That compares to 5.2 seconds for the non-Performance version of the dual-motor Model S, the 85D, but it's not like it's really fair: the P85D has 691 horsepower and 864 pound-feet of torque. That's the insane part. We're looking forward to January 18th, when they're going to drag-race 12 Model S' against each other and various exotics at Palm Beach International Raceway. Meanwhile, you can check out the Drag Times acceleration runs in the video above. News Source: Drag Times Green Tesla Electric Videos Sedan acceleration