Like 2001's Monolith, a silver-covered monstrosity has slowly emerged on Santa Monica Boulevard. It's not a high-class cryogenic facility or a sex club for robots, but in fact a Tesla-themed diner (with included charging stations, of course). Tesla boss and unelected shadow president Elon Musk has been bandying about the idea of entering and flopping in yet another business since 2018, eventually describing his ideal restaurant as a "Tesla futuristic diner (Grease meets The Jetsons with Supercharging)" and promising that it would be ready "later this year". This was in 2023.
According to the New York Times:
As he has often done, he put his finger on a major piece of culture ripe for reinvention — in this case, gas-station dining in the age of electric cars, which need longer to recharge than it takes to top off a tank — and put a visionary, gee-whiz spin on it.
That was before the chain saw. Before DOGE and the "fork in the road" email and the what-did-you-do-last-week email. Before anti-Musk protests at Tesla dealerships became weekly occurrences in Los Angeles and other cities. Before the White House promised to treat vandalism against Teslas as domestic terrorism. Before a 50 percent drop in Tesla's stock price took shareholders on a fast ride from "gee-whiz" to "look out below."
All of which have made Tesla's foray into restaurants a far more loaded prospect than it seemed a short time ago.
It's because of these controversies that the diner has yet to land an actual food supplier. Names ranging from Wolfgang Puck to Shake Shack have been thrown out, but none have signed on to the project, scared away by its heavy political implications – meaning that as of right now, the restaurant is a giant, empty hunk of metal doing nothing but costing Musk money. I'm reminded of that old saying – if there's a bar with a single Nazi and 20 people not doing anything about him, it's a Nazi bar. Does the same apply to futuristic diners?
Previously:
• Market for used Teslas 'crumbling'
• A fast food morning with the Tesla Roadster Sport
• Best of the internet: 'To My Neighbor Whose Tesla Is Covered in Kraft Singles'
