Tesla Enters Dining Business with Drive-In Restaurant

Tesla is entering the dining business, preparing to open a drive-in restaurant in Los Angeles.

This new location would allow diners to eat and watch movies on an outdoor screen while they charged their electric vehicles. But as the New York Times (NYT) reported Friday (March 21), the restaurant’s opening has run into a roadblock: Tesla’s CEO.

Elon Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has turned his car company into a lightning rod, sparking protests at Tesla dealerships as well as a few cases of vandalism. Meanwhile, Tesla’s sales continue to slip.

According to the NYT, this has made finding chefs something of a challenge. For example,  Caroline Styne and Suzanne Goin, owners of the Lucques Group of restaurants in Los Angeles, decided against operating the diner in 2023.

At the time, the reasons were economic. But now, Styne said she’s changed her mind about the car company, recently swapping  her Tesla for an electric BMW.

Max Block, founder of the Los Angeles hospitality-communications agency Carvingblock, told the NYT that any chef would need to factor in Musk’s reputation before agreeing to cook for the Tesla diner.

At the same time, a diner where customers can watch movies while eating food brought by roller skate-wearing carhops — something Musk has suggested — would appeal to “a culture where people dine for experiences,” Block said.

In other electric vehicle (EV) news, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster wrote last week about the “potential platform misfire” facing the industry, driven by several factors. Chief among them: charge anxiety, the worry among consumers about EV’s limited battery life and the scarceness of charging stations.

“Although critics dismiss this as overblown, the fear of running out of power without convenient charging options reflects legitimate infrastructure gaps in the EV ecosystem,” Webster wrote.

American motorists, the report added, have become used to being able to fuel up in less than five minutes at the 145,000-plus gas stations, typically found in  convenient locations, and offering a number of pumps.

“By comparison, there are roughly 53,000 EV-friendly stations across the country — with 130,000 charging ports — and they’re unevenly distributed and not so easy to find,” wrote Webster. “This creates enormous uncertainty, which increases anxiety.”