Canadian officials are investigating an unusual spike in Tesla vehicle sales that coincided with the suspension of the federal EV rebate program in January. Over a three-day period, Tesla reported selling 8,600 vehicles at four locations across the country, resulting in $43 million in government rebates.
One Tesla location in Toronto reported more than 1,200 sales on January 11 alone, accounting for $4 million in rebates. These figures have raised concerns among industry analysts, who question whether the registrations were legitimate or whether Tesla knew about the rebate programs impending pause.
The Canadian Automobile Dealers Association has urged Transport Canada to investigate, citing potential misuse of the rebate system. Attempts to reach Tesla for comment have gone unanswered.
The federal EV rebate program, facilitating over 500,000 electric vehicle purchases since its inception, was paused on January 13, 72 hours after the government signaled its potential suspension. Officials are now reviewing the Tesla sales data to determine if any irregularities occurred during the programs final days.
This is absolutely fraudulent lmao
Dollars to donuts, this chucklefuckle is buying his own goddamned inventory to get the rebate money.Teslas aren't cheap, 8,400 cars would easily be a few hundred million dollars.
Teslas aren't cheap, 8,400 cars would easily be a few hundred million dollars.they definitely did some dumb shit like "sell" them to another dealership they own for $1
the average dealer probably sells like 5 cars a dayNeither does the average dealer have 1200 cars on its lot, let alone 1200 Teslas.
Ya, this seems shady as fuckThat math works out to a sale every 24 seconds over the course of an 8-hour workday.
seriously 1200 Teslas in a single day at 1 location definitely is a red flag that something is going on
I hope that they contact every one of those 8,600 buyers in their investigation.
So in the event that foul play (fraud) is detected what are they going to do to Leon Smuk and Tesla?ban the sale of tesla cars
I used to work at a car dealership that sold both new and used, and 1200 would have been a significant chunk of the used sales for the year.Obviously you weren't a good salesman if you couldn't do 1200 sales on a frozen day in January /s
It's like comically so. I don't know what the average sale rate for Teslas are over a 3 day period, but I wouldn't be shocked if it's 1/4 of that or less.
So in the event that foul play (fraud) is detected what are they going to do to Leon Smuk and Tesla?Ban his products in Canada
who question whether the registrations were legitimate or whether Tesla knew about the rebate programs impending pause.
The federal EV rebate program ...was paused on January 13, 72 hours after the government signaled its potential suspension.
I get the feeling they are not legitimate but
who question whether the registrations were legitimate or whether Tesla knew about the rebate programs impending pause.
Ya, this seems shady as fuckA Tesla dealership selling 1200 Teslas in a MONTH would be suspicious, that's like 60 per business day, that much in one day is obvious fraud.
seriously 1200 Teslas in a single day at 1 location definitely is a red flag that something is going on
A Tesla dealership selling 1200 Teslas in a MONTH would be suspicious, that's like 60 per business day, that much in one day is obvious fraud.
Yeah...not enough staff to process those purchases. Buying a car takes a few hours at the very least and sales rep aside, its the same time for everything else.Yeah buying a car is not like buying a burger and fries lol. Even if it should be quick and easy to walk in and say I want that and write a check and drive out they always make you negotiate and say no to a thousand addons and sit there while they try to get a better loan rate and then actually processing the paperwork and cleaning up the car for delivery takes at least 30 minutes. The auto dealer industry is the only one that tries super hard to not sell you their product, it's insane. If auto dealers sold groceries the whole world would starve to death.
They'll probably just have to contact Elon Musk.He got the AI to do it.
Though if he wanted to abuse the rebate, it wouldn't exactly have been that hard to forge documentation with random names, addresses, signatures etc
Yeah buying a car is not like buying a burger and fries lol. Even if it should be quick and easy to walk in and say I want that and write a check and drive out they always make you negotiate and say no to a thousand addons and sit there while they try to get a better loan rate and then actually processing the paperwork and cleaning up the car for delivery takes at least 30 minutes. The auto dealer industry is the only one that tries super hard to not sell you their product, it's insane. If auto dealers sold groceries the whole world would starve to death.Not Teslas though. You just click the buy button and thats it. Theres no negotiation and they dont have dealerships just stores that only hold customers preordered vehicles waiting for pickup. Which makes this situation more confusing to me. Like did they just do all the rebates they were sitting on for months at once with the deadline coming up? Error? Some management trying to pull a fast one?
Even if Elno Morp is buying them is this really illegal?I'm not a lawyer but I would assume it's illegal to have the government give you $43,000,000 in rebates for pretending to sell cars, or buying your own cars from yourself.
I'm not a lawyer but I would assume it's illegal to have the government give you $43,000,000 in rebates for pretending to sell cars, or buying your own cars from yourself.Well, good luck to the lawyers who try fighting this government or Musk.
The only plausible explanation is that with the impending deadline, they filed all the backlogged rebates.
But given Musk's penchant for breaking the law, I'm going with fraud.
Backlogged rebates would be a logical explanation, but at that sheer scale? Unless they just shut the dealerships down for a few days and only worked on rebates, maybe
Imagine Musk getting arrested