Another Autopilot investigation and Elon's newest pay deal (The Tesla Track, Ep. 1)

A Model S crashed into fire truck, Elon Musk's potentially massive payday, and I take a ride with Tim Stevens in the Model 3. Let's hit the Tesla Track. Greeting and welcome to The Tesla Track. I'm Ashley Esqueda, and I'll be recapping the biggest Tesla news at the beginning of every month, and I might have some fun surprises in store for you too. This month, a lot happened over at Tesla. You might have heard about the Model S that rearended a firetruck. Usually a standard accident wouldn't be newsworthy. But this time it's a little different. The Culver City Firefighters Twitter account posted a picture of the accident and said, quote, the driver reports the vehicle was a on autopilot, unquote. Fortunately no one was hurt in the accident, and it doesn't seem like the driver blamed autopilot. They just told the firefighters that it was engaged at the time of the accident. Since autopilot is potentially involved here, the US national transportation safety board announced they'd sent two employees to look into the crash and conduct a field investigation. It might be a while for that report though. A previous fatality accident involving autopilot and [UNKNOWN] Took over a year to investigate. Friendly remember Tesla drivers, auto-pilot is a helper, not a fully functional level five autonomous chauffeur. Eyes on the road, friendos. [SOUND] Tesla CEO Elon Musk stands Appears to be the richest guy on earth if a new compensation agreement works out. Tesla's board of directors submitted a new ten year compensation road map from Musk. It is a little different than most of our paychecks. The deal is a 100% Pay for performance structure. So no salary, no bonuses. All of the compensation is based on the company continuing to grow and make money. Elon gets new stock every time the company makes $50 billion in revenue, but that stocks only vests if the company achieves 12 out of 16 milestones and every single market capitalization milestone. Which are kind of lofty goals. That translation though? Elon is going to be CEO of Tesla for at least another decade. And if he achieves those milestones, the company value is going to make shareholders super happy while Simultaneously making Musk one of the richest human beings on the planet, which sounds like a win-win. Shareholders still have to approve the deal though and they'll likely be voting to approve or deny that plan in early February 2018. Of course, there were a ton of other Tesla headlines last month. Tesla's massive power pack project in Australia made over a million bucks in a few days. Some dude got arrested on suspicion of DUI in San Francisco and then explained to the cops that his stalled Model S on autopilot. The Tesla Semi was spotted driving around Santa Clarita, California and pictures of what could be the first totaled Model 3 hit the Internet and also broke my heart. Speaking of a Model 3, our very own Roadshow editor-in-chief and The most dapper drifter I know, Tim Stevens, reviewed it. I begged him to let me come up to SF to drive the Model 3, which sadly he declined, but I was able to go up to SF and sit in it and play a little road trip game to find out some of Tim's favorite and least favorite features. [MUSIC] I thought it would be fun to play this game called fortunately, unfortunately, where you start a statement with fortunately or unfortunately about the model three. Okay. And then I respond with something that might be a little bit either true or false. Okay. [LAUGH] It could be fun. And then you build upon that for the last time. And then we'll talk about that part of the car. Okay. All right. So you start. You have to make a statement using fortunately or unfortunately about the Model 3. Okay. Unfortunately, there's no cruise control stock. Fortunately, there could some day be voice controls to make up for it. [LAUGH] Unfortunately, the voice controls don't work if there's no. Internet connection to the car. Ouch. Okay so the next fortunately unfortunate I feel like has to be maybe about the user experience. So maybe I'll start. Sure. And say, unfortunately some features are buried three to four menus deep. Fortunately Teslas very progressive about software updates. And I'm sure they're listening to keep posting on Reddit cuz I'm sure they're watching that too. There won't be changes to come, for sure, fortunately. Unfortunately, I cannot just yell, Tesla left. [LAUGH] And it turns, yet. Not yet. Yet. Not yet, no. Okay, so let's do one last fortunately/unfortunately about the exterior of the car. Exterior, [MUSIC] Fortunately, it's looks pretty nice. I know that's hard one to followup on. Unfortunately- [LAUGH] The panel gap issue seems to still be around a little bit, but it's much better than At the beginning. Fortunately, we've seen pictures of the early, early, early Model 3's that had pretty, not great paneling gaps. This car is really not that bad. There's definitely some issues, you can see a few places where things don't quite line up right Which is not so bad for a $35,000 car, but we gotta keep reminding people this a $57,000. Fully loaded. Not so good. Well, since obviously this car makes you so depressed, which it really doesn't, but I'm just saying that so that I can tell you I think we're done here. I think you can just hand it over to me and I'll take it from here. Sorry, this one's going to go back to Tesla. And I signed my life away so I had to protect it with my life.>> So unfair. I'm going to tell Elon on you.>> Okay.>> Rude.>> That's okay.>> [music] That's it for this months show. I will be back in a few weeks with more of the latest Tesla news. Until then check out the roadshow.com for all of your favorite electric vechile coverage And then hit me up on Twitter @AshleyEsqueda with the #Teslatrack to suggest stories, ask questions or, honestly, show off your sweet, sweet Teslas. You might even end up featured on the show. Until next time Teslovers, be good to humans. [MUSIC]