Hundreds Of Teslas Are Piling Up In A Vacant Mall Parking Lot

Hundreds of Tesla vehicles parked at a shuttered mall outside St. Louis have residents asking, "What the hell are they doing there?"

They're not the only ones, either. Twitter users have picked up on the large number of EVs sitting on the lot, even prompting some to wonder if Tesla is suffering from a demand problem. Fortunately, a local news station has since investigated and has shed some light on the situation.

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Initial reports indicate that more than 400 Tesla-branded vehicles were parked in the lot of the former Chesterfield Mall. The parked vehicles included an internet-counted 58 Cybertrucks. When the local news station reported on the matter, they counted "dozens" of Cybertrucks scattered among the various other models.

As it turns out, a Tesla service center is about three miles from the mall. The idea is that the lot is being used as overflow for new cars delivered at the closest service center, which is around 2.5 miles from the mall. The result is a "Tesla farm at the old Sears."

"One of our users happens to be Tesla, who does have a dealership in the valley but does not have enough capacity to park all of the cars they are bringing in," confirmed Tim Lowe, senior VP of the Staenberg Group, which owns the mall, "So they are renting the space."

Now, the local service center has the capacity to park about 135 vehicles (including customer cars). It's not clear just how full the lot is at the moment, but historical satellite imagery shows that the lot is often more than half-filled with vehicles. Locals say that it's not uncommon for Teslas to be parked at the shuttered mall, but the number of cars in recent weeks has skyrocketed. So why the sudden uptick in mall-parked Teslas?

Workers at the local Service Center