this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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Looks like Tesla’s reliance on government subsidies has finally hit a wall in Canada.

After Tesla requested reimbursement for an unprecedented 8,669 Canadian EV rebates in just three days, the Canadian government froze Tesla’s rebate payments and paused all future eligibility for federal rebates while tariffs are in place.

Read the full details and the fallout here.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Ever since this broke I’ve been so curious to see which are dealers with bad, rushed paperwork before a deadline that they let pile up before mass-submitting, and how many are outright fraud. Neither would surprise me at this point.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 5 days ago (1 children)

One store in ontario had 1200 in one day and a store in quebec 4000 during a week-end so i vote for fraud

It would not surprise either if a lot of the swastikar vandalism was assurance fraud too

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (2 children)

That's the number they sent, we don't know the sales dates on those so maybe they were just super bad at submitting the paperwork...

[–] [email protected] 41 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The rebate is quite large. $5,000 or thereabouts in most cases. The company also fronts that money to the customer, and then claims reimbursement from the government.

Have you ever known any business to delay in collecting $5,000, particularly when it is sitting as a liability on their books until they collect? Much less to do that more than 8,000 times?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I'll never accuse Tesla of being managed by competent people 🤷

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago

Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaair point XD

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago (2 children)

And risk losing the money? No, my friend. Safer to assume it's fraud.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Occams blunt, used-in-the-shower, needs-a-replacement-blade razor.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Occam's got hairy legs and razor burn from how often I been borrowing the razor lately

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Safer and more reasonable to assume it is fraud.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Probably all of them are fraud. A friend bought a Tesla last year and they said Tesla DOESN’T do the paperwork for the EV rebate. The client must go after it and pocket the money. All other dealers do the job for you.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 days ago (1 children)

So maybe they found a way to identify customers that didn't, and submitted the paperwork in order to get the rebate for themselves?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I suppose they sent the requests so they could sell the cars cheaper than the competitors when the rebate is cancelled.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

For my money, that's the most probable reasoning for why Tesla tried this.

Falls under the "cool motive, still fraud" umbrella, but it makes the most sense.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's definitely some kind of fraud, although they might have found a loophole that wasn't in the spirit of the law but still legal.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Well now they are not getting the money. So their loophole did not work so well.