Credit – Ed Howard of HowardModels – retrieved from X

Have you ever been sitting at an EV charging station and wished you could throw on a movie or something while you wait? Well, Tesla is providing such an opportunity to the denizens of Los Angeles.

Tesla Motors recently received permission to break ground on a 1950s-style drive-in movie theater and diner where the cinema parking comes with Tesla fast-charging stations.

The permits allow for 30-some charging stalls, two outdoor movie screens, and a restaurant with rooftop seating all to be built on 7001 W Santa Monica Blvd. in LA, and Tesla fanatics have combed through the company’s recent press material to extract as many teasers and hint-drops as possible.

In fact, Tesla owners have been expecting such a project for some time, as Elon Musk tweeted about it back in 2018.

Then in 2021, Elon tweeted that he had a “major new Supercharger station coming to Santa Monica soon! Hoping to have 50’s diner & 100 best movie clips playing too. Thanks Santa Monica city!”

Tesla’s supercharging network is the most extensive and advanced currently deployed in the country, but Musk has theorized that a way to alleviate consumer concerns about the time it takes to charge an electric vehicle during one’s busy hours would be to add leisure and hospitality features around the charging stations.

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Once a classic American weeknight spot, there are only 320 or so drive-in theaters left in the country where there were once 4,000.

Despite California having more than almost any other state still in operation, there are no drive-in theaters in LA, the city where most of the movies shown at such establishments are made.

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