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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.

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[-] lung@lemmy.world -2 points 1 week ago

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

[-] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 week ago

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.

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.

[-] Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Canadians are furious, but even considering an uptick to catch rebates this is pure fraud:

Let’s run the numbers:

  • 8,669 iZEV rebates over three days claimed by Tesla dealerships.
  • Mostly claimed by four Tesla locations.
  • Tesla dealerships in Canada are open from 10 AM to 6 PM.
  • That works out to 722 rebates per primary dealership per day.
  • Which equals 90 iZEV rebates per hour.
  • Or 1.5 Tesla sales per minute.

Let’s take a step back. Two Tesla sales every 90 seconds? That’s absurd. A good car salesperson might close two deals in two hours, not per minute. And that’s in a normal sales environment… not one where every eligible car has to be processed for a government rebate at the same time.

[-] neatchee@lemmy.world -1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If by "private dealership" you mean the Tesla dealerships themselves. "Buy" their own cars, pocket the rebate, sell the car later.

You know.

Fraud.

[-] frickineh@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

Canadian government thought of that. The sales are marked as either personal or commercial in the database. All the sales I saw were personal.

this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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