06/16/2026
With the Tesla Diner, Elon Musk could have reinvented an institution. But the restaurant looks a lot like what we already have, just weirder and worse, Ellen Cushing reported in 2025. She went to the diner to see it for herself. https://theatln.tc/iSvBlQSB
In 2018, Musk announced his intention to put an “old-school drive-in” at one of Tesla’s existing supercharging stations in Los Angeles. It could have been “a solution to the problem of EVs taking significantly longer to charge than a gas car takes to fill up,” Cushing writes. “On paper, it makes perfect sense.”
But in reality, Cushing argues, it is a failure of imagination. “Early visitors to the diner were greeted by robots, but on the day I came, none was to be found, disappointing the many, many people I heard ask about them,” she writes. “And although it is ostensibly a diner, it has no table service; this is more like a fast-food joint with higher prices and extra seating.”
“The Tesla Diner is already a self-referentialist hall of mirrors, right down to the artifacts on the walls and the merchandise for sale everywhere you look,” Cushing continues. “This is a diner where no one seems particularly interested in dining, a restaurant whose most important feature is actually the parking lot.”
📸: Yasara Gunawardena for The Atlantic
