Between January 10 and January 12, after being warned that an EV rebate program was running out of funds, Tesla dealerships in Canada managed to claim 8,669 individual iZEV EV rebates, or about $43 million CAD in incentives. That’s a staggering number of sales to log in a single weekend, about 1.5 sales per minute. Let’s dig into the numbers.
I think for those that wanted Teslas, they realized they have to buy them before the tariff war gets too hot. So ironically there’s a surge of purchases
Ideology aside, they make some very good cars, and I don’t blame people for buying them
Canadians are furious, but even considering an uptick to catch rebates this is pure fraud:
With Tesla, you submit your order online. I highly doubt that’s where these numbers come from but it is possible that the orders were placed online and routed through sales center in the major population areas.
Is it possible some of these were liquidations or inventory sell-off or something? As a data person my initial assumption would be a few bulk purchases throwing this calculation out of whack
I could see some private dealership figuring out a way to buy the vehicles and resell them as a hard-to-get item later
Edit: down votes for asking a question? Y’all are weird. I’m not even saying it’s not fraud.
It’s not for “asking a question”
We’re all used to these “centrist” / “just asking questions” types and how they only crawl out of their holes to play devil’s advocate for fascists, it’s tired.
If by “private dealership” you mean the Tesla dealerships themselves. “Buy” their own cars, pocket the rebate, sell the car later.
You know.
Fraud.
Do non-consumer purchases count as eligible for the rebate if they plan to resell?
Don’t think so, but if I give you $100-$500 to buy a car on paper and sell it back to me less the rebate, that shouldn’t be illegal.
I have no idea. That’s why I was asking 🤷
So, the data has a “commercial” or “consumer” flag, Canada is apparently quite sensible and thought one step ahead of the shady things auto dealers might try - so we’d be able to see if it was a wholesale sort of deal, I think.
It wasn’t, all the sales I saw were consumer flagged.
Tesla has always had problems with quality. In an attempt to increase profit and decrease production time Tesla has sacrificed quality control.
Many customers feel the need to do it themselves. So many do this that there are even people making money of it.
Tesla has always been like this. That’s why they have mostly been cheap compared to competition.
Even if there was a real run on Teslas, the numbers they claim to have sold are impossible. This is some sloppy ass fraud. The only way they could have “sold” that many was as fleets and if they did, I’d bet everything I own that it was money laundering.
Canadian government thought of that. The sales are marked as either personal or commercial in the database. All the sales I saw were personal.
It was out of 4 dealerships. It’s impossible to sale that many cars in three days from 4 dealerships, no matter how many people want to buy them. Plus no way was Canadian demand that high over a $5k rebate.
Should be easy to verify those sales if they are legitimate.