Tesla has sent a response to Transport Canada about its sudden incentive cash grab from March, stating that this is standard process and suggesting that the incentives were for backdated sales that Tesla hadn’t filed yet.

Until recently, Canada had a $5,000 incentive for electric vehicle purchases, similar to the US $7,500 federal incentive from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

That ended earlier this year, though as the incentive program ran out of money more quickly than expected, and it didn’t look like the government was going to refill the program anytime soon. Canada is also currently going through a contentious federal election process, so it was unlikely for its government to move on refilling this incentive while things are shaken up.

So, the government communicated in January that the program would run out of money soon – very soon – giving dealers only a few days to claim incentives.

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Then in March, it was reported by the Toronto Star that something suspicious had happened with Tesla, as it had filed for 8,653 EV sales within the last 72 hours of the Canadian rebate incentive, an abnormally high number.

One Tesla locations in particular, Quebec City, claimed 4,000 rebates over the course of a weekend, which is physically impossible for a location of that size, and represents about a ~20x spike in daily deliveries for the location. Another location in Etobicoke reportedly claimed 2,528 rebates over the weekend, which is more than all the rebates that location had previously claimed combined.

The alarm was raised by the Canadian Auto Dealers Association, which said its dealers as a whole had been left out of around $10 million in rebates representing 2,295 cars. Dealerships claimed that “Tesla gamed the system” and that “they cleared everyone else out.”

As a result of this, on March 25 Tesla had $43 million in rebates frozen as the government investigated what went on with this sudden spike in incentive filings.

Fast forward to now, and Tesla Canada has responded to the back-and-forth claiming that it didn’t do anything weird, simply filed a number of backlogged applications, as is normal for the program.

In a letter dated March 28 obtained by Electrek, Fereshteh Zeineddin, Tesla’s director of sales and service for Canada, says that Tesla’s filings were normal and that Transport Canada, the government office responsible for administering the incentive program, should know better.

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.

Tesla claims that backlogged filings have always been allowed, and says that it has always complied with program rules and has had good standing with the Canadian government as a result.

However, Tesla does not specifically state in the letter how many of its weekend filings were for backdated sales.

Tesla says it was “shocked” that it didn’t hear about the incentive investigation directly from the government, and instead had to learn about it through the media. It suggests that it might pursue legal action if payments aren’t resumed, though that it does understand that it may not get payments for every delivery depending on program funding.

Finally, Tesla plays the victim in the letter, saying that as a result of Transport Canada’s investigation into these incentive filings, Tesla employees have suffered negative public perception and are increasingly facing harassment and verbal abuse by Canadians.

Electrek’s Take

We’re still skeptical of Tesla’s incentive claims, even after reading the letter.

The thousands of incentives filed over the course of one weekend would represent several months of incentive backlog. While disorganization is nothing new for Tesla, it still does seem questionable that Tesla’s 1,400-employee Canadian subsidiary would ignore tens of millions of dollars of revenue for several months.

And complaints about a lack of communication from the government could fall under that same umbrella – if Tesla is truly disorganized enough to leave these tens of millions on the table, maybe they’re also disorganized enough not to receive communication from the government regarding the incentive program.

Tesla does, after all, have no communications department and recently lost its head of policy who had previously been acting as an impromptu communications department on twitter. Instead, Tesla now uses the twitter feed of its CEO as its primary form of communication, but he’s apparently too busy literally defending Hitler instead of managing the company that made him the vast majority of the wealth that he is now channeling into anti-EV entities.

So, surely the reason for Tesla’s negative public perception in Canada is all because of this Transport Canada investigation, and it couldn’t possibly have any other source… right?

Tesla’s policy personnel and overseas employees are definitely having to walk a thin line right now, and this seems like another example of that.

Currently, public perception of the company is down specifically because of its CEO, Elon Musk, who seems determined to embarrass himself in public every day and bring his company down with him.

He’s attached his own persona to Tesla so loudly and publicly over its existence that the two are inextricable in the minds of many – we even quite often hear people refer to Tesla, a company that has over a hundred thousand employees, as “he,” rather than the proper “it” or “they,” with people using Elon Musk himself as synecdoche for the entire company (which he barely does any work at).

But Tesla employees can’t say that, because it is also well known that Musk has a vindictive management style, and that anything that is even perceived as a lack of support can result in retaliation (remember when we were blocked by a so-called first amendment lover for protecting his customers?).

So they’re having to walk a thin line right now – advocating for Tesla’s interests without pointing out the elephant in the room, which is that the company is being run by an idiot who is determined to run it into the ground while also doing all he can to spread white supremacy around the globe.

More specifically, Canadian public perception of Tesla is down more than most due to Musk’s close association with convicted felon Donald Trump, who recently wandered back into the Oval Office (despite that there exists a clear legal remedy for insurrectionists), and who has been working to shatter the close friendship between US and Canada by restricting the free trade of goods across the longest border in the world.

Tesla knows this, as it submitted a letter to the US Trade Representative stating that Tesla could become target of retaliatory tariffs, and it already has.

This incentive pause is one of those examples. Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s transport minister, specifically mentioned the illegal tariffs imposed upon Canada as part of the government’s skepticism about these incentives:

No payments will be made until we are confident that the claims are valid. I also directed my department to change the eligibility criteria for future iZEV programs to ensure that Tesla vehicles will not be eligible for incentives so long as the illegitimate and illegal U.S. tariffs are imposed against Canada.

That’s not the only Canadian government representative who has made a similar statement about Tesla. When British Columbia Energy Minister Adrian Dix recently removed Tesla products from a charging incentive rebate program, he stated:

I thought they shouldn’t be made available on a public subsidy program right now. I don’t think anyone in British Columbia needs to be told why, and I think most people would support their removal from that list.

It’s ironic that Tesla’s incentive grab was pointed out by the Canadian dealer lobby. Dealer lobbies have long been the largest legal thorn in Tesla’s side, even moreso than the oil industry – while oil has done its fair share of propaganda to discredit electric cars, dealer lobbies have been responsible for stopping Tesla’s ability to sell in several areas, specifically in the US and also around the world, due to Tesla’s direct sales model which threatens traditional auto dealers.

The irony here is that Musk’s current political allies include auto dealerships, which are one of the most republican sectors in America. They are feeling more represented than ever on the federal level, which could lead to more trouble for Tesla’s sales model.

Another irony lies in Tesla’s mention of the 1,400 Canadians employed by Tesla. While those employees, like most Tesla employees, are either just doing it as a job or are truly interested in advancing EVs, that number does pale in comparison to the thousands of Canadian job losses already caused by the administration that Elon Musk is the world’s biggest monetary and rhetorical supporter of. And while some employees might still care about the mission, Tesla’s CEO doesn’t. So spare us the crocodile tears on that one.

So its clear that the “public perception” problem isn’t about one report, it’s about the one guy who we all know is the source of the public perception problem – and basically every other problem with Tesla right now.

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