> Tesla sold about 8,600 cars in three days at four separate stores in Canada, or roughly one every two minutes per showroom, in January.
Right. If, and only if, the stores were open 24/7.
Most are open 8 to 10 hours a day.
Tesla is claiming with a straight face that these three stores sold a new car EACH, every FIFTY SECONDS from opening to closing for three days straight.
> Moreover, according to Quebec-based Motor Illustrated, Tesla accounted for 89% of all claims filed during that period.
I think the word for this starts with "F" and ends in "raud".
> "No payments will be made until we are confident that the claims are valid," said Transport Minister Chrystia Freeland in a statement to the Toronto Star.
I'm sure in the US we'd happily pay Tesla and maaaaaaaybe claw it back several years later. Maybe.
The article references the showrooms as the sales point.
Not "online sales". "Tesla sold about 8,600 cars in three days at four separate stores in Canada".
Yes, cars were sold online. This references Tesla recording the place of sale as those showrooms.
The contortions to defend Tesla are ridiculous.
If you believe Tesla, nearly 20% of its annual sales for the entirety of Canada happened around these four locations in one weekend. It just so, coincidentally, happened to be conveniently timed for subsidies.
Not sure I fully understand the accusation. 8600 sales in a weekend is a lot for a physical store, but these happened online. What about the other stores, were they also high? It is possible this was legit but there should be an investigation. Preventing waste, fraud and abuse.
Real purchases require real people, so simply asking who the buyers are should sort it out. If employees were filling out the forms and “buying” then it should be fairly straightforward to figure out.
For some reason the Canadian iZEV rebate was provided to the dealer, not the end customer. Dealers were to sell below cost and then get money back from the government, so they'd be on the hook for the difference if they couldn't get the rebate. The rebate was scheduled to cut off in March but was obviously running out of funding before schedule. Dealers had some leeway to batch their claims and Tesla sent an unprecedented number of claims right at the end that drained the remaining funds, but these claims are not necessarily all for sales from that small window. I can't find any specifics but surely the claims submitted have to substantiate that a car was sold to a Canadian resident. I'm still not sure that Tesla did anything illegal unless they are found to have sent fraudulent claims, which should be trivial to check.
> It is possible this was legit but there should be an investigation.
It's really not. That's Tesla saying that one-fifth of its annual sales for the entire country of Canada happened on one weekend in one part of the province of Ottawa.
Tesla sold about 8,600 cars in three days at four separate stores in Canada, or roughly one every two minutes per showroom, in January.
I mean, it’s going to take more than two minutes just to convince the finance guy that if he mentions “paint protection” one more time, you’re walking out.
That's not how it works for Tesla. Totally different buying experience. You order online, get a notification some days or weeks later that it's ready, go to the store sign a couple of documents and drive off with the car. Maybe 10 minutes total. (Source: bought a Tesla a few years ago). I just recently got a Kia EV9 and it was a 3-4 hour marathon of paperwork, talking, more paperwork. Really terrible buying experience. Nice car though.
Yeah that's one of the reasons my dad went with Tesla for his recent car purchase. My wife helped him get a RAV4 (Toyota) a few years ago and the three of us lost four hours on a weekend because of the song and dance that dealerships put you through. Never again. From now on it'll be Tesla, Rivian, Polestar, or Lucid instead.
Does Tesla do business differently in Canada than the U.S.? I thought purchasing in the U.S. was done through an app, and everything was one-price, no negotiation? Pick the options you want, and the car is delivered to your door at sometime in the future. And the showrooms were exactly that, places to show the car, no selling, no salesmen, no protection plan upselling, undercoatings, etc.. Maybe someone who has purchased a Tesla in Canada or the U.S. could chime in?
> While a spike was to be expected and Tesla orders are typically filed online rather than at a physical store, that nonetheless works out to two cars sold every minute of every hour for three days straight.
This story is hilarious. Yes, lots of people will want to buy Teslas when the government announces that the $5,000 subsidy is about to end. The other car manufacturers are just mad that they lost out due to their antiquated sales process. If they had direct purchase via online ordering, maybe they would have gotten a larger slice of that remaining subsidy money?
More or less hilarious than "billionnaire that builds companies that utterly depend on government subsidies but the companies are not doing well, goes into government to make the government more efficient and spend less" ?
How do these statements compare? You know, on a hilarity scale from 1 to 10?
>"billionnaire that builds companies that utterly depend on government subsidies but the companies are not doing well, goes into government to make the government more efficient and spend less"
Given that he's cutting government workers and programs he despises (eg. "DEI" or foreign aid), that's not too surprising. What people think is important is in the eye of the beholder, so it's not incongruent for someone to be pro government subsidies in their industry, but against other forms of government spending.
I don't think anyone wants a larger slice of the pie, I think they want the share of the pie that they earned that was consumed by (what appears to be) outright fraud on Tesla's part. Tesla's numbers are implausible at best, at least showing some unusual and unexplained behavior. They exhausted the credits with the incredibly dubious sales. Why shouldn't they be investigated?
Those numbers aren't implausible at all. It equates to about two months of sales during a normal period, and is easily explained by people who were planning to buy a Tesla in the next 3-6 months rushing to get their orders in. People are very motivated when there is a $5,000 discount on the line.
This just seems like sour grapes from traditional dealerships who subject their customers to multi-hour haggling sessions to close a sale. Is there any indication of malfeasance here other than Tesla selling a lot of cars?
>In January, four showrooms in three major cities managed to sell 8,600 cars in the span of just a weekend following news that the country would no longer help fund part of the purchase price for a new electric car under its iZEV program.
This is supposed to be suspicious? What's next? It's "suspicious" that Amazon had 5x the orders in the weekend after the fourth thurdsay in November? There's a pretty straightforward explanation: the government announced the subsidies were going to end, so all the potential buyers sitting on the fence or planning to purchase some time in the future made the leap and purchased immediately, causing a spike.
You don't think it's suspicious that those four showrooms each sold 2,150 cars in a single weekend?
I mean sure, there's a chance that happened for real, but "suspicious" doesn't mean "there was definitely something shady going on", it means "maybe there was something shady, this deserves a closer look".
>You don't think it's suspicious that those four showrooms each sold 2,150 cars in a single weekend?
You don't think it's suspicious that Amazon has a huge order spike in the weekend after black friday? Maybe the FBI should investigate on the off chance they're trying to evade taxes, or launder money for Mexican cartels or whatever.
2150 cars seem pretty reasonable for sales that would otherwise have been made in the next 3-6 months, but were pulled forward by the threat of rebates being pulled.
It’s possible there were cars sold before that weekend that didn’t have credits registers yet. And also possible that a lot of people placed orders that weekend to take advantage of the credit. (Which was how the program was supposed to work, consumers like credits, consumers sign deals to get credits).
This is just divisive political agendas from the Canadian media
To be fair, it's a product directly endorsed by the President of the United States of America. As he said, "we have to celebrate [Musk]", especially when there's an "illegal boycott" as stated by that president. I'd be very surprised if a US president supported any company that engages in fraud, it's just unbecoming of the position.
You mean the same American president threatening to annex the country? Because they can fuck right off, if so.
I'm amazed American's don't seem to grasp this. The president is threatening annexation, and several people below them in the administration are taking it seriously. This is deeply offensive.
Maybe, but surely the general intelligence of the average HN commenter should be able to pick up on sarcasm / satire / parody. Unless, of course, it reflects a mirror back at them.
Readit News
Right. If, and only if, the stores were open 24/7.
Most are open 8 to 10 hours a day.
Tesla is claiming with a straight face that these three stores sold a new car EACH, every FIFTY SECONDS from opening to closing for three days straight.
> Moreover, according to Quebec-based Motor Illustrated, Tesla accounted for 89% of all claims filed during that period.
I think the word for this starts with "F" and ends in "raud".
> "No payments will be made until we are confident that the claims are valid," said Transport Minister Chrystia Freeland in a statement to the Toronto Star.
I'm sure in the US we'd happily pay Tesla and maaaaaaaybe claw it back several years later. Maybe.
The stores are open 24/7. They're online sales. The "dealership" is just the place you pick up your car from.
Not "online sales". "Tesla sold about 8,600 cars in three days at four separate stores in Canada".
Yes, cars were sold online. This references Tesla recording the place of sale as those showrooms.
The contortions to defend Tesla are ridiculous.
If you believe Tesla, nearly 20% of its annual sales for the entirety of Canada happened around these four locations in one weekend. It just so, coincidentally, happened to be conveniently timed for subsidies.
Real purchases require real people, so simply asking who the buyers are should sort it out. If employees were filling out the forms and “buying” then it should be fairly straightforward to figure out.
For some reason the Canadian iZEV rebate was provided to the dealer, not the end customer. Dealers were to sell below cost and then get money back from the government, so they'd be on the hook for the difference if they couldn't get the rebate. The rebate was scheduled to cut off in March but was obviously running out of funding before schedule. Dealers had some leeway to batch their claims and Tesla sent an unprecedented number of claims right at the end that drained the remaining funds, but these claims are not necessarily all for sales from that small window. I can't find any specifics but surely the claims submitted have to substantiate that a car was sold to a Canadian resident. I'm still not sure that Tesla did anything illegal unless they are found to have sent fraudulent claims, which should be trivial to check.
It's really not. That's Tesla saying that one-fifth of its annual sales for the entire country of Canada happened on one weekend in one part of the province of Ottawa.
I mean, it’s going to take more than two minutes just to convince the finance guy that if he mentions “paint protection” one more time, you’re walking out.
> While a spike was to be expected and Tesla orders are typically filed online rather than at a physical store, that nonetheless works out to two cars sold every minute of every hour for three days straight.
How do these statements compare? You know, on a hilarity scale from 1 to 10?
Given that he's cutting government workers and programs he despises (eg. "DEI" or foreign aid), that's not too surprising. What people think is important is in the eye of the beholder, so it's not incongruent for someone to be pro government subsidies in their industry, but against other forms of government spending.
I don't think anyone wants a larger slice of the pie, I think they want the share of the pie that they earned that was consumed by (what appears to be) outright fraud on Tesla's part. Tesla's numbers are implausible at best, at least showing some unusual and unexplained behavior. They exhausted the credits with the incredibly dubious sales. Why shouldn't they be investigated?
This just seems like sour grapes from traditional dealerships who subject their customers to multi-hour haggling sessions to close a sale. Is there any indication of malfeasance here other than Tesla selling a lot of cars?
This is supposed to be suspicious? What's next? It's "suspicious" that Amazon had 5x the orders in the weekend after the fourth thurdsay in November? There's a pretty straightforward explanation: the government announced the subsidies were going to end, so all the potential buyers sitting on the fence or planning to purchase some time in the future made the leap and purchased immediately, causing a spike.
after an +80% drop in sales
in a country that has one tenth the population of the US
whose CEO was/is probably the second-most hated person in Canada
and all of the sales qualified for the rebate despite most of their models not qualifying for the rebates
and Tesla's vehicle sales were exactly enough to completely drain the fund but not a penny more
...or you can think that this is almost certainly fraud.
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I mean sure, there's a chance that happened for real, but "suspicious" doesn't mean "there was definitely something shady going on", it means "maybe there was something shady, this deserves a closer look".
You don't think it's suspicious that Amazon has a huge order spike in the weekend after black friday? Maybe the FBI should investigate on the off chance they're trying to evade taxes, or launder money for Mexican cartels or whatever.
2150 cars seem pretty reasonable for sales that would otherwise have been made in the next 3-6 months, but were pulled forward by the threat of rebates being pulled.
This is just divisive political agendas from the Canadian media
I'm amazed American's don't seem to grasp this. The president is threatening annexation, and several people below them in the administration are taking it seriously. This is deeply offensive.
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