Elon Musk Says He'll Still Be Tesla CEO In 5 Years

• Elon Musk says he'll still be CEO of Tesla in five years.
• The only gotchas? If he's dead, or if he can't get majority voting power to protect himself from "activists."
  
• Musk believes that Tesla's sales have already turned around everywhere except for Europe.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk isn't going anywhere—at least not willingly. According to Musk himself, during an appearance at the Qatar Economic Forum this week, the CEO casually announced that he has plans to lead Tesla for at least five more years.

That is, "unless I die," he added, almost as if it were an engineering problem he hadn't yet solved.

The moment came during a heated exchange over politics with Bloomberg journalist Mishal Husain, who asked Musk if he planned to remain the CEO of Tesla over the next five years. Musk's answer? A simple "Yes," with the contingency of an asterisk-laden qualifier: "[Unless] I die. Let me see if I'm dead."

The line got a laugh from the audience, but the mood quickly turned serious. Because while Musk might still be CEO, it's not just and robotaxis on his mind—it's power. Whether that be in the political space (which is admittedly winding down) or in the board room, he wants control. And in this case, Musk made it clear that his continued leadership is contingent on obtaining majority voting power at Tesla.

That control, according to Musk, is the way he will keep activist investors from booting him out of his own automotive empire.

"It's not a money thing. It's a reasonable control thing over the future of the company, especially for building millions, potentially billions of humanoid robots," said Musk, denouncing that money will influence whether or not he stays at the reins. "I can't be sitting there, and one day I get tossed out for political reasons by activists. That would be unacceptable. That's all that matters."

That's the robot clause.

If Musk is to stay and guide Tesla into its AI-drenched, Optimus-dancing future, he wants assurance that he can't be voted off the island. That means protection from regulators, shareholders, political entanglements or whatever other controversy comes his way in the future; including a huge sales slump that's already very real.

But that's behind Tesla, according to Musk. The sales slump is a non-issue to the CEO, as he believes that it's something already resolved in most of Tesla's major markets:

It's already turned around. Europe is our weakest market. We're strong everywhere else. Our sales are doing well at this point and we don't anticipate any meaningful sales shortfall. Obviously the stock market recognizes that since we're now back over a trillion dollars in market cap, so clearly the market is aware of the situation. So it's already turned around.

[...]

There are also people who are buying [our cars] because Elon's crazy or however they may view it. So, yes, we've lost some sales perhaps on the left, but we've gained them on the right. The sales numbers at this point are strong and we see no problem with demand.

The public sales figures tell a different story. In fact, Tesla's home market sales continued to slump during Q1 2025 while the rest of the industry shot up double-digits. Despite this (and an uber-inflated price-to-earnings ratio), Tesla's stock is up, which Musk says is all you need to know about how the company is doing.

At the root of Tesla's sales problems is Musk's political championing. That's not new information, though, but it's certainly something that directly affects both Musk and the company he captains. Husain pushed Musk into talking about how politics have affected Tesla (and how he's taken the public criticism).

"I did what needed to be done," said Musk, acknowledging that he's taken the vandalism of Tesla showrooms due to his political engagement personally.

He continued: "I'm just I'm not someone who's ever committed violence. And yet massive violence was committed against my companies. Massive violence was threatened against me. Who are these people? Why would they do that? They're on the wrong side of history, and that's an evil thing to do, to go and damage some poor innocent person's car. To threaten to kill me. What's wrong with these people? I've not harmed anyone."

All of that activism may have taken its toll on Musk. He says that he's "done enough" political spending for the foreseeable future—which is probably a good thing considering the social backlash it's had on Musk's image and the companies that he's associated with. But he doesn't rule it out entirely.

But the damage is already done. Two-thirds of Americans recently surveyed said that they wouldn't buy a Tesla because of Musk. Whether or not Tesla will recover from that PR nightmare with Musk continuing at the helm won't be something we'll know anytime soon. Either way, if the ship goes down in the next five years, Musk says he'll be right there with it.