Ottawa, Ontario — A recent price increase on the Tesla Model 3 has caused the popular EV to lose eligibility for purchasing incentives in Canada, according to a notice posted by Transport Canada.
Tesla is currently listing its Model 3 at $59,990 on its website, far surpassing the $45,000 benchmark to be eligible for the highest available rebate of $5,000. Model 3s order before Nov. 23 will still be eligible for rebates, however.
In 2019 the company lowered the base price of the Model 3 to just under $45,000 to make it eligible for the program, which began in May of that year.
Since then nearly 35,000 Teslas qualified for it, with the company receiving $173.6 million.
Canada’s second most popular EV, the Toyota Prius Prime plug-in hybrid, is eligible for a $2,500 rebate and saw 14,822 vehicles get rebated since May 2019, for a total of $36.9 million.
Joanna Kyriazis, a senior policy adviser at Clean Energy Canada, said “The federal rebate program has been very popular and there are plenty of other EV models that would qualify for the federal rebate.
“We just need a national zero-emission vehicle mandate in place to ensure enough of those vehicles are available to Canadians across the country.”
