Quebec sells the most electric vehicles (EVs) out of any Canadian province, but French Canadians are turning on Tesla.
Quebec’s auto insurance board, the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec, says that only 524 Tesla cars were registered in the province from Jan. 1 to March 31, which is a 90 per cent drop from the quarter before, when the automaker sold over 5,000 cars.
The Tesla market in Quebec was on an incline throughout 2023 and 2024, but took a tumble in 2025. While there is likely a part of this that’s related to the U.S. trade war and temperaments souring on Elon Musk, there are other homegrown issues as well.
Quebec paused its provincial EV rebate program between Feb. 1 and April 1, and the federal incentive ended on March 31. Quebec EV buyers used to be able to stack the two incentives for $12,000 off the price of an EV, but now that’s greatly decreased.
In an interview with CBC News, Daniel Breton, president of Electric Mobility Canada, suggested that once more data is available, we’ll see large drops in all EV sales in the province, not just Tesla. However, the Quebec provincial EV rebate is back, discounting EVs by $4,000, so perhaps we’ll see an uptick once we have data for Q2 2025.
Tesla is still under investigation in Canada over claims that it was unrealistic for the automaker to sell 8,653 vehicles in three days as it zapped the remaining funds from the federal EV incentive program. The company also raised prices at the end of April since it no longer needed to keep things around $55,000 to apply for the federal discounts.
Source: CBC News
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