Elon Musk said he expects to be CEO of Tesla for the next 'several years,' but that 'it would be nice to have a bit more free time'

• Elon Musk said on Tesla's Q4 earnings call that he expects to remain Tesla CEO for "several years."
• He added that it would be nice to have "a bit more free time" instead of working seven days a week.
• Musk, who is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is known for his grueling, 80-hour workweeks.

Elon Musk said he expects to remain Tesla CEO for the foreseeable future, but that it would be nice to have "a bit more free time."

Musk discussed his future plans during a conference call following Tesla's fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday. An analyst from Baird, Benjamin Kallo, asked Musk about a pledge he made a decade ago that he would step down as CEO once Tesla has a mass-market car on the road.

Musk replied that he expects to be CEO of Tesla for "several years."

"I think there's still a lot that I'm super excited about doing," Musk said. "And I think it would be hard to leave a lot of these great projects halfway or partway done. So I do expect to be running the company for several years into the future."

But Musk also lamented the amount of time he spends working on Tesla, adding that he thinks he's likely more hands-on when it comes to technical work than other chief executives.

"Obviously, nobody is or should be CEO forever," Musk said. "So I don't expect to be - like, the sheer amount of work required to be CEO of Tesla is insane. And I do - I think I do probably more - I definitely do more technical work than is typical for a CEO."

"It would be nice to have a bit more free time on my hands as opposed to just working day and night, from when I wake up to when I go to sleep, seven days a week. Pretty intense," he added.

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Musk's intense workload is likely due in part to his other gig as CEO of SpaceX, a role he held before becoming Tesla CEO in 2008. He's spoken out in the past about his belief that a crammed schedule is the only way to produce real change: In 2018, Musk said on Twitter that that people need to work between 80 and 100 hours each week in order to "change the world."

To stay productive, Musk is known for planning each day in five-minute time slots, avoiding phone calls, and constantly multitasking.

"There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week," Musk said at the time.

But Musk's grueling schedule takes a toll, even on him. During Tesla's so-called "production hell" in 2018 when it was working on the Model 3, Musk slept under his desk at Tesla's factory and stayed for days at a time without going outside in solidarity with Tesla employees working overtime to meet production targets.

Musk told The New York Times in an interview at the time that the previous year had been "excruciating" and that he's almost missed his brother Kimbal's wedding and spent his birthday at Tesla's offices. The exhaustion from the job took a toll on his physical health, he told The Times.