cross-posted from: https://fedia.io/m/[email protected]/t/1889794
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.
So… Fraud. But how, and who all does it benefit. Surely the sales tax far exceeds the rebates. So Canada is probably fine.
They could have “bought” all those cars themselves and now have them on the books as pre-owned.
That would probably reduce the value of the car more than the rebate but I imagine that Tesla would have no issue with selling them as new even though they are technically second hand.
They’d then be able to carry on selling them at rebate values going forward giving them an advantage over other manufacturers.
I always thought it was normal that dealers buy their own cars to buff the sales figures, especially towards the end of the quarter.
When I’m looking for a car or motorcycle I always check for young, preowned vehicles - they’re pretty much new and much cheaper.
It is quite normal but I’m sure that they wouldn’t normally do it to that extent.