EV sales have been huge in California. In addition to the federal EV rebate, there are numerous rebates at both the state and local level that buyers can qualify for. Unfortunately, the demand for these rebates is so great that these programs often run out of funds, leaving would be applicants in the dust. And sometimes that demand can cause some applicants to get outright rejected even when they did everything right, as one Bay Area EV owner found out.
San Francisco’s ABC 7 reported on the ordeal of Johnathan Seminoff. Seminoff wanted to purchase a Tesla Model 3. He also wanted to use a $7,500 rebate from California’s Clean Vehicle Rebate Project. Seminoff thought he had everything squared away, as he described to ABC 7: “We live in the right area, we have the right income, as long as we purchased the vehicle, filled out the application, submitted it to the Clean Air Vehicle Program... 99.9 percent sure we would qualify.”
Unlike the federal rebate, the state program allows buyers to purchase their EVs, then file some paperwork to get a check in the mail after the purchase is squared away. That’s what Seminoff did in the summer of 2023. He purchased his Model 3 and immediately submitted his application for the rebate.
Around the same time, though, state officials were warning people that the program was running low on funds due to high demand. Seminoff mentions that there was a lot of “paperwork required... access to our W2s, tax records, lending agreement,” in applying for the rebate.
As far as he was concerned, he did everything right, and he submitted all of his documents. Then came the waiting game. Weeks turned into months, and the program eventually ran out of funds. Seminoff says he assumed his application was just being processed. Then came an email in January.
“They said your application has been canceled. And my immediate response was, wait a second...” he told ABC 7.
The program said the reason his application was canceled was because it was submitted a day too soon. His application was dated July 28th, but his purchase didn’t actually go through until the following day; that delay came down to the fact that Tesla didn’t process his paperwork until after midnight. California’s rebate program requires that applications not be turned in before the vehicle is purchased, and so Seminoff’s application was canceled.
To pour salt in the wound, even though he had waited months for a response, his application was canceled almost immediately; the rebate program just wasn’t able to notify him quickly because of overwhelming demand, a spokesperson explained.
A spokesperson said Seminoff wasn’t notified in time to correct the date because the program was overwhelmed with applications, telling 7 On Your Side: “Staff was processing upwards of 16,000 applications a month. Unfortunately, that meant a delay in Mr. Seminoff receiving updates.
Seminoff, along with possibly thousands of other applicants, never received the rebate. The state decided to end the program last fall to focus on low-income EV buyers. But so far nothing has replaced it, and there’s no timetable of when that could change. State Senator Bill Dodd (D) called the whole thing “government gone awry.”
“There’s no excuse for that. They should have realized this onslaught was going to come and staffed up for it,” Dodd said.