This compensation plan was granted to Musk — who took on high risk to achieve a high reward — because of his paramount role in Tesla's success. Though Tesla skeptics ridiculed his decisions at the time, Musk's management has resulted in the carmaker increasing its value from $59B to $600B and achieving almost all its stipulated performance targets.
This compensation plan is clearly excessive. Musk has benefited from his influence over the board's committee – which falsely claimed it had no conflicts of interest – and been rewarded for his part-time management role at Tesla, largely on the grounds of milestones that had already been achieved when shareholders voted.
There's a 50% chance that Tesla's market capitalization will be at least 1.94 trillion dollars by Jan. 1, 2030, according to the Metaculus prediction community.