[anonfordays]

>Straight from the horses mouth; the dealership is reimbursed.

It is paid to the buyer, but collected by the dealership. Buyers are those who qualify to receive it. Straight from the horse's mouth:

"There is a limit to how many incentives Canadians and Canadian organizations can receive for the purchase or lease of eligible vehicles under the iZEV Program, in a calendar year: Individuals are eligible for one incentive"

"Individuals are eligible", not dealerships. Dealerships collect the reimbursement, but the individuals must qualify. If you qualify and he dealer didn't discount the car, they owe you the rebate:

"If you didn't receive the incentive on an eligible ZEV purchased or leased on or after the date listed on the eligibility vehicle list, please contact the dealership to verify if they are enrolled in the Program. If they are enrolled, they may reimburse you the maximum eligible incentive amount (this is usually reimbursed by cheque)."

https://tc.canada.ca/en/road-transportation/innovative-techn...

[warningforever]

I'm impressed you came back to this old thread!

No matter how hard you try to rationalize it, 1,200 sales in one day at a single dealer just as the dealers become aware that the program is about to run through its' funds is suspicious.

Doubly so with a company whose lawyers argue in court you can't believe what their CEO says, that holds onto deposits for 7 years for a "coming-soon-car", and whose cars never surprises to the upside on mileage.

[anonfordays]

>I'm impressed you came back to this old thread!

Had to stamp out the fake news with reality.

>No matter how hard you try to rationalize it, 1,200 sales in one day at a single dealer just as the dealers become aware that the program is about to run through its' funds is suspicious.

Facts and reality don't require rationalization. It's only suspicious if you get your news from reddit. Dealers don't qualify for the rebate, buyers do. The Canadian government announced to everyone the program was ending. It hit the news.

>Doubly so with a company whose lawyers argue in court you can't believe what their CEO says

Did you get this fake news from reddit perhaps?

>that holds onto deposits for 7 years for a "coming-soon-car

Customers can get they deposits back at any time they please.

>whose cars never surprises to the upside on mileage.

LLM hallucination?

[somerandomqaguy]

>"Individuals are eligible", not dealerships. Dealerships collect the reimbursement, but the individuals must qualify. If you qualify and he dealer didn't discount the car, they owe you the rebate:

A difference without distinction. From the financial point of view, the cheque goes from the Government of Canada to the dealership. Whether the dealership then cuts another cheque or simply discounts the vehicle $5000 is irrelevant because in either case the money has to enter the dealership's coffers.

Now AFAIK adding in the rebate directly as a discount into the bill of sale is the modus operandi of Tesla and other dealerships in Canada that were participating in the iZEV. And that's why I don't think it's impossible that this is legitimate.

If Tesla sold inventory for the previous years and applied the discounts on the bills of sale, but then didn't get around to filing the paperwork until now near the end of the rebate... well that would explain why the sudden rush to get the paperwork done when the pause was announced. Other dealerships were doing something similar and are now out of pocket for their procrastination.

Now it's a little odd to me why a company as tech savvy as Tesla wouldn't have automated the filling of the forms. But I could see that just being due to to mismanagement and potentially also why the store managers refused to comment to CTVNews when they came asking about it.

The idea that people were rushing out to Tesla's website to buy isn't impossible either but Tesla's never been shy about bragging about good sales performance. The fact that the storage lots near the Toronto or Montreal are also quite full doesn't exactly help sell that story either.

Now it's also possible that this is borderline fraud. It's only $330 to establish a numbered company in Ontario, so hypothetically if someone had $3 million or so to create 8600 numbered companies, those holding companies could in 'buy' a Tesla that qualifies under the iZEV for a $5000 reimbursement. Technically that is not illegal on it's own, and money doesn't have to flow anywhere. And actual buyers would still be buying a new car.

It's also possible that it's just outright fraud and Tesla just submitted forms for sales that never happened. There's nothing on the Transport Canada forms that require only a name of the purchaser and then a make, model, and year of the vehicle, so it'd be trivial to just put falsified information into the forms.

Whatever the reality is, it's still suspicious, and bears further scrutiny. Especially given how politically delicate government funds flowing to Tesla is right now.

[anonfordays]

>A difference without distinction. From the financial point of view, the cheque goes from the Government of Canada to the dealership. Whether the dealership then cuts another cheque or simply discounts the vehicle $5000 is irrelevant because in either case the money has to enter the dealership's coffers.

It's a huge difference. Dealerships cannot just make a claim and collect the money. It's not theirs, even though they collect it.

[somerandomqaguy]

No it's not. I'm not talking about eligibility, that has nothing to do with how the cash flows, because the implication that you were making right at the front was that money goes straight from the government to the buyer. Which is absolutely not the case, Tesla has to file the paperwork and Transport Canadas pays out to Tesla. After that, TC doesn't have any say in where the money goes (also why TC can do this investigation now; they haven't released the money yet to Tesla).

Plus right now that's what Tesla's is one of the more believable scenarios I mentioned: : https://electrek.co/2025/04/09/tesla-canada-says-its-shady-4...

That they were rushing to fill out a backlog from sales from previous months. Not a massive rush of sales.

[anonfordays]

Your source literally states:

  "The incentive is structured such that a dealership can offer a discount upfront to customers, then get reimbursed later by the government after filing for that incentive. Which Tesla points out means these are not grants to Tesla, but rather grants to Canadian customers which are then handled by Tesla."

So as I originally stated, there was no fraud, this was all fake news. QED.