- Hundreds of Tesla EVs are parked at a former mall lot with no clear timeline.
- Tesla is leasing the space for 16 months due to dealership storage limitations.
- Aerial and street images show the lot filled with EVs as far back as 2023.
Every big automaker wants to see its cars filling parking lots across the world. The way Tesla is going about it in Westchester, Missouri, isn’t exactly what we mean, though. The company rented out a lot to stash extra cars more than a year ago. The rent’s still being paid, and the cars are still piling up.
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This isn’t just a few rows of overflow inventory. We’re talking hundreds of Teslas crammed into the long-shuttered parking lot of the old Chesterfield Mall. That location is about three miles from a nearby Tesla dealership, which simply doesn’t have the physical space to hold them all.
Also: Tesla Dumping Unsold Cybertrucks At Mall Parking Lot And The City’s Fed Up
“Tesla has a short-term lease to park Tesla cars at Chesterfield Mall. We relocated them to the Dillard’s parcel when we started mall demolition,” said Tim Lowe, senior vice president of leasing and development for The Staenberg Group, speaking to Fox 2. As it stands, Tesla is only six months into a 16-month lease, meaning this lot will remain a makeshift storage yard for at least another ten months.
Storing unsold cars off-site isn’t a new move for Tesla. The company does this from time to time and from place to place. We’ve seen it in Florida, where dozens of cars ended up vandalized. More recently, Tesla got in hot water over doing it in Detroit, where it’s against city code.
There’s a decent chance that all of this has been going on a lot longer than just a year. A Google Maps Street View image labeled ‘June 2023’ shows the lot already housing plenty of Teslas. A transport truck is also in the image with six Teslas on board and its ramps down. While it might look like an episode of a modernized Stepford Wives, the underlying cause could be more troubling.
Most major automakers keep a large supply of finished cars ready to go to dealers. Tesla is no different in that sense. Where things get hairy is about customer demand. It’s no secret that the brand is struggling to keep pace with where sales were last year.
Total income for the first quarter dropped 71 percent, and April didn’t offer much relief. U.S. sales for the month fell 16 percent, a sharp contrast to the broader EV market, which dipped just 4.4 percent over the same period.
If demand keeps sliding, the real question isn’t just how long these parking lots will stay full, but what Tesla plans to do with all those unsold cars once the lease runs out.
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