The article doesn't go into much details of the stock award. Musk is proposing not taking a salary for the next 10 years and receiving a 1% stock award each time he meets some insanely aggressive milestones:
https://cdn.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Tesla-C...
http://ir.tesla.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=1054948
I'm not a TSLA shareholder, but tying CEO performance to company performance rather than an indifferently high salary seems reasonable to me.