According to a new, brow-raising WSJ report, Tesla's board quietly began searching for Elon Musk's potential successor about a month ago, approaching

Musk convinced his board to hand him a monster pay package—but that was before Tesla lost more than $500 billion in market value.

Shares of Tesla were flat in premarket trading Thursday after the EV maker denied a Wall Street Journal report that its board was searching for a replacement for chief executive Elon Musk.