TaoJones
Beyond Driven
Santa Monica is a premium area and space is expensive and hard to find. The city of Santa Monica is actually very EV friendly. They have installed free L2 chargers in several parking structures years ago. The parking structures are reasonably priced considering how busy and high demand that area is. Hard to find anything cheaper in any of the beach cities in LA. When you go to Santa Monica those parking structures are great options and cheaper than other parking lots. Tesla doesn't owe us free parking in high demand areas like this.
And yet, at least 1 other beach city offers all alt-fuel vehicles free parking at their commercial meters, including prime downtown parking, and is in no danger of going broke.
Santa Monica, on the other hand, charges for parking while charging (exceptions noted) and *aggressively* tickets single-plated vehicles like no other geopolitical entity with the possible exception of LAX long- and short-term parking.
Only saving grace will be SC v3, if and when they ever get around to retrofitting urban chargers (not a given) to halve the time necessary for a full charge.