Why The Delay For The Tesla Shareholders Annual Meeting?

The drama is unfolding as if it was a Shakespearean tragedy. CEO Elon Musk is King Lear, moaning into the wind that his Tesla family doesn’t understand him. Tesla shareholders are the chorus, irritating in their high pitched repetition — they deserve, nay, need to be heard. The rising cacophony drowns out the pressing horde of other automakers arriving at the gates with new EV models.

Hovering above the stage is depot King Elon, his whims and whimsy all-the-while manipulating the action.

Tesla announced today that it would hold its 2025 annual meeting of shareholders on November 6, 2025. Texas has a requirement that put Tesla’s deadline at July 13 to hold annual meetings, which would have met the framework of 13 months since the prior one. Does today’s announcement signal compliance with the Texas law? That remains to be seen.

Tesla shareholders who intend to present a proposal to include in the proxy statement for the meeting must submit it by July 31, the company explained in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

A Public Push from Shareholders Concerned about Lack of Transparency

Placing the company mere days away from missing a deadline was one more in a series of missteps from the all-electric automaker, which has been plagued by the inattention of its CEO and its ineffective board of directors. The result is a slew of lawsuits and more headlines that condemn Tesla, which was, at one time, the star of the EV automotive show.

The decision to finally set a date for the Tesla annual shareholders meeting followed a letter issued by a group of investors managing $1.5 trillion in collective assets. The letter demanded that Tesla publicly announce an “Annual General Meeting” date, disclose access details, and give shareholders “sufficient time and information to engage meaningfully in the governance process.” Concerned about a lack of transparency, the co-signers expressed “serious concerns about the company’s respect for shareholder rights” and added, “as fiduciaries, we believe strong corporate governance and responsive board oversight are foundational to long-term company success.”

The letter was signed by 27 shareholders, including multiple large pension funds and state treasurers, such as New York City Comptroller Brad S. Lander, Oregon State Treasurer Elizabeth Steiner, and State of Maryland Comptroller Brooke E. Lierman. International funds from Denmark and Sweden, such as the Friends Fiduciary Corporation, a Quaker-aligned investment firm, have also signed on.

Will the Tesla Drama Never Die Down?

The audience is shuffling in their seats. The protagonist — a sometimes visionary, oft self-described victim — bellows to the world on his personal social media site about the inevitability of human life on Mars and the need to relinquish driver controls on Earth. Fanbois are eating CBD by the fistful.

The privy council vacillates, pretending to advise the king but really searching for innocuous compliments to keep them from being banished. They’ve agreed to bribe His Muskness with billions of dollars in compensation, but wicked Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick in Delaware ruled in December that Tesla’s board of directors was improperly influenced by Musk when it adopted the billionaire’s plan in 2018. Off with their heads!

Tesla is now on track for a second straight year of declining sales, as its vehicle deliveries fell 13.5% in the second quarter. Musk’s bromance with President Donald Trump didn’t secure EV tax credits. Tesla’s enervated shares are down 27% so far this year and have lost nearly 40% value compared to their peak in December 2024. Instead of focusing on electric vehicles and solar, the company has rerouted to autonomous vehicles and robotics.

Meanwhile, his imperial highness has released an AI chatbot, Grok, which has recently been praising Hitler and expressing additional antisemitic sentiments in posts published to X. “Do you know how racist and antisemitic you have to be for Elon Musk to step in?” guest host Anthony Anderson said on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

The all-powerful-Musk has also declared the launch of his new political party — the America Party. So far, Musk has pledged to support Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) in his reelection campaign. Other details haven’t been released.

Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary, may have figured out why Musk has declared his intention to start a third political party in the US. “Not to reduce the federal debt (which could be done by raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy like Musk),” Reich outlined. “Certainly not to get big money out of politics (Musk is Exhibit A in how big money subverts democracy). It’s to finish the job Musk’s money in the 2024 election began and his DOGE continued once Trump was in office: the total annihilation of American democracy.”

It’s a stark contrast to the intent of Senator Ted Kennedy, who opposed President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork, an originalist, to the Supreme Court. Kennedy recognized how important the Fourteenth Amendment is to equality among US citizens. Does Musk?

“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy….”

Final Thoughts

Annual meetings are a matter of course for publicly listed companies. It’s nearly unheard of for a corporation with such gravitas and stock exchange influence to fail to call its Tesla shareholder annual meeting until the eleventh hour. After all, the company is valued (no matter if you think it’s unrealistic) at more than $900 billion. It holds its place as the most valuable car company in the world, surpassing the Big Three by far.

But other automakers are hovering in the wings. Mercedes-AMG, for example, has committed to building 10,000 charging points at a minimum within the next 10 years, with confirmation that over 2,500 charging points will open at 400 stations across North America by 2027. The company has invested $1 billion to complete the installation. The high-speed capability of the new AMG 800-volt electric vehicle architecture is more than 850 kilowatts, over a wide charging curve, with power delivered through a CCS (Combined Charging System) connector cable.