Santa Monica Could Be Testing Ground for Tesla's First Supercharger Restaurant

By Jorge Casuso

March 13, 2018 -- Tesla's first combination restaurant and supercharger station, teased by Elon Musk in a Tweet in January, is being proposed for Santa Monica's auto row, according to plans submitted to the City Tuesday.

So far, word that Tesla had filed a planning pre-submital notice has been circulating on the internet, but there have been no details of the plan, except for its proposed location at 1401 Santa Monica Boulevard, currently occupied by a car sales lot.

"The pre-submittal plans were submitted to the City Tuesday," a planning staff member told the Lookout.

"They'll have a meeting to look at it and it can change," said the staff member, who declined to give her name. "It will be done in house with different divisions within the department."

The plans come a little more than two months after Musk first tweeted his plans on January 6.

"Gonna put an old school drive-in, roller skates & rock restaurant at one of the new Tesla Supercharger locations in LA," Musk wrote.

A news spread after a screen shot of planning pre-submital on the City's website was posted on the Tesla Motors Club forums, according to a story Tuesday on TESLArati, a blog that covers Tesla developments.

"Notable in Tesla’s building permit is the mention of a solar hotovoltaic/thermal system, which would likely be installed on the site," TESLArati wrote.

"This echoes some of the amenities featured in Tesla’s massive 40-stall Supercharger in Kettleman City, CA" that opened last year.

However, unlike the Kettleman station on Interstate 5 between San Jose and Los Angeles, which includes a coffee shop and space for food trucks, the Santa Monica application specifically mentions a restaurant.

A story posted Tuesday in the Silicon Valley Business Journal suggests the restaurant "will double as a showroom of sorts for people headed to look at Honda and Ford vehicles.

"The company already runs a store in Santa Monica, about a mile away, just off Wilshire Boulevard," the story noted.

At a restaurant conference late last year, Tesla’s chief technology officer J.B. Straubel provided a glimpse of what could be in store for Santa Monica.

“People are coming and spending 20 to 30 minutes” at the charger stations, according to an article in restaurantbusinessonline. “They want to eat, they want to have a cup of coffee, and they want to use the bathroom.”

Musk provided hints of what he might consider in response to a comments to his tweet, saying the supercharger stations could offer "an outdoor screen that plays a highlight reel of the best scenes in movie history" and a menu that pops up on the dashboard "as soon as you put the car into park.”