Canada Freezes $43M in Suspicious Tesla Rebates. Tesla’s Claim of 1.5 Sales Per Minute Prompts Government to “Fully Examine Each Claim Individually.”
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.
https://fuelarc.com/evs/canada-freezes-43m-in-tesla-rebates/Open linkView original on fedia.io697
Comments45
Anybody else just get a boner?
Oh lord the news has him bricked up like a Cybertruck after a routine software update.
Username checks out. Those hands about to be filthy.
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.
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
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...
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?
I'll never accuse Tesla of being managed by competent people 🤷
Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaair point XD
Occams blunt, used-in-the-shower, needs-a-replacement-blade razor.
Occam's got hairy legs and razor burn from how often I been borrowing the razor lately
Safer and more reasonable to assume it is fraud.
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.
So maybe they found a way to identify customers that didn't, and submitted the paperwork in order to get the rebate for themselves?
I suppose they sent the requests so they could sell the cars cheaper than the competitors when the rebate is cancelled.
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.
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.
This makes me wonder how much they've gotten away with in other countries. Who knows if the sales numbers they've been reporting are even accurate?
Tesla's stock is an irrational, overinflated hype stock with an absurd price-to-earnings ratio and a large-shareholder CEO who was being investigated by the SEC before he dismantled it.
Considering that the stocks are used as his personal piggybank and his history of totally-not-market-manipulation-because-there-are-no-charges, I would be more surprised if the sales numbers are accurate.
“This is totally just an accident. We use AI to calculate our sales and apply that to the rebate program. So it’s totally not criminal fraud or anything. Thanks.”
On a positive note, that kind of claim has been struck down in Canada before.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisagarcia/2024/02/19/what-air-canada-lost-in-remarkable-lying-ai-chatbot-case/
Wow, the entire thing was over such a petty amount. The plaintiff was only awarded $812.02, and that was for both damages and court fees. So presumably, the price of the refunded tickets would've been even less than that. Instead of just paying that (relative) pocket change, Air Canada chose to go to court, where they not only lost, but set a precedent that holds businesses responsible for their AI's accuracy in the future.
Such a beautiful story :')
Nah, just revoke them. The government reserves the right to change its mind.
Nah, a democratic nation has to follow its own laws. It looks much better if they revoke it with proof after due process.
Something tells me those funds are frozen in the way that stuff north of the permafrost line gets frozen and never gets unfrozen
Easier to stave off a lawsuit if you don't say what you mean, you just do what you mean, you know?
Nice image, but has the flaw that the Permafrost is melting around the globe at increasing rates.
Cease the assets until it's worked out!
Perhaps you meant "seize"? "Cease" means "stop" which sort of still works I suppose.
Cease AND seize those assets, indeed!!
Failure of dictation, followed by failure of me to read and edit it before posting :)
Freudian slip, but it does low-key work as word-play!
And something like a machine can "seize up" too.
I think the trick with English is to just keep seizing any old random words out of a hat until the other person nods convincingly enough.
First comment on the thread that made me laugh out loud, 10 points
Hear me out:
Everyone seems to think that Musky is the richest person on the planet, when that "fact" is based on his leveraged net worth, not liquid assets.
What if Musk was trying to do some shady garbage in / to Camada to pull a few million out to float him for a few months. This could be similar to what a normal person might do with a few hundred dollars from an ATM.
Musk is undeniably in the "uber rich" category. I argue that the difference between being a billionaire and a many-billionaire is mostly if not entirely academic in practice.
https://eattherichtextformat.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Yup
Find out faze reached
What’s with this thread and people using the wrong word? First cease/seize and now faze/phase.
You can add assurance/insurrence fraud
I noticed it and I didn't say nothin but I'm low-key proud to have inspired this trend
Congrats Muskrat, not everywhere loves it's billionaires like the US. Get fucked
Are there even 8k people in Canada?
Yeah but like if they find it was fraud are they going to do anything about it? More than a slap on the wrist? Like, jail time? A public hanging? Probably nothing, as usual. but I can hope.