Tesla starts construction on a diner/drive-in charging station in Los Angeles

[Brian Lutz]

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/13/tesla- ... -hollywood
https://electrek.co/2023/09/28/tesla-br ... ercharger/

Tesla is reportedly beginning construction of a 50's styled diner/drive in in Los Angeles with 36 Supercharger stations, carhop service, two movie screens and a rooftop bar. It is reported that they had originally intended to build this in Santa Monica, but moved it to Los Angeles after the project got caught up in red tape.

[SamSpade]

It kind of gives me a big "Meh..." but they were the first ones to build out roadside charging stations, have opened their plug standard to other auto manufacturers for their use in North America, etc.

I suppose when you've got money to spend, it's OK to try something out. These might be the "Travel/Auto Plaza" of the future.

[veteran+]

1 and 1/2 block east of West Hollywood. This is probably inside the Hollywood District of Los Angeles.

Interesting.............I think the large screens are odd given the small foot print. Clearly not a Drive in Movie theatre set-up.

[babs]

Charging is Tesla's AWS. An accidental business that ends up being the profit driver for.the rest of the company. It sure looks like they will dominate EV charging for many years to come.

[Brian Lutz]

From the articles it doesn't seem that they intend to show feature-length movies here, they intend to show stuff that can be watched fully during a ~45 minute charging session. That would probably end up being "hour long" TV shows (which tend to have between 45-48 minutes of program with the rest filled in with commercial breaks.)

[veteran+]

BTW.....................not a great area to be charging and watching a "movie"........................

Just sayin...........................

[storewanderer]

This is an unpleasant neighborhood. But this may revive the lot/location. The Shakey's there previously wasn't a bad place and didn't want to close.

Large new apartments at the intersection look too dense to me but look better than what was on those lots before which was just very run down stuff.

[veteran+]

I went to that Shakeys once when it was popular and busy. NEVER returned again. Crappy experience on all levels including customers.

The gentrification in Hollywood is spotty and inconsistent and that's a problem. You can live in a LUX apartment and directly outside is uncomfortable BLIGHT.

This project is an exercise in ego and premature for the area.

[storewanderer]

I went to that Shakeys once when it was popular and busy. NEVER returned again. Crappy experience on all levels including customers.

The gentrification in Hollywood is spotty and inconsistent and that's a problem. You can live in a LUX apartment and directly outside is uncomfortable BLIGHT.

This project is an exercise in ego and premature for the area.

In my opinion for what they are trying to do here the site is also too small. I am confused why they selected this site. It was not available (Shakey's was kicked out- lost its lease). Seems like they need a larger site. Just my opinion.

Maybe the food operation will draw in outside customers too (maybe they think from the new apartments?) because it can't make it on charging customers alone.

[Brian Lutz]

They originally wanted to build this in Santa Monica but after running into bureaucratic delays they shifted to the site in Los Angeles and just plopped down a few Superchargers on the originally intended site. There's also the factor of needing to have adequate power infrastructure available since 32 superchargers could potentially be drawing as much as 8 megawatts of power (which would be roughly equivalent to 275 houses) at any given time. I'm sure putting this in Hollywood is also being done for show as well.