Tesla's burn rate is infamous and it has always been flirting with bankruptcy. There was one point where Musk himself brought his personal worth to basically zero to make payroll.
But here's the thing about that "absurd" pay package mentioned in the article. That's the maximum he gets and he only gets it if he meets every milestone on the road to taking Tesla from $54b valuation to $650b, roughly a 12-fold increase in ten years. If he fails to do that, he does not collect any salary at all for those years (though of course he still keeps his stock, so if it goes from $54b to $53b he's still a very rich man).
http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/21/investing/elon-musk-tesla-pay-package/index.htmlThe one criticism is that the fundamental milestone is based on market cap, not revenue or profits. So he could lose money for 10 years, drive the valuation up to $650b and get his full pay. That said, there may be milstones in there based on revenue or profits. I don't know the details
