Tesla against Germany – WORLD

D The Ella Musk Twitter account, the CEO of Tesla, was unusually quiet Wednesday: two tweets of apology to a British diver involved in rescuing children from a cave Thai and personally insulting Musk a few days ago was he sat down. No more. So Tesla's boss was always busy with the cleanup of the last drop, with the problem in Germany he has not dealt with until now – at least by short message. […] A small authority on Tuesday caused big problems to German Musks customers: The Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA) announced that hundreds of Tesla owners had to pay back the electric car premium of 2000 euros. For the so-called environmental bonus of the state only gets who buys an electric car that costs a maximum of 60,000 euros. BAFA had decided at the end of November 2017 that the S model was not included because the cheapest version, which remained just below this upper limit, was only theoretically ordered. In fact, customers were pushed to a more expensive version, the eligible variant did not actually exist.

Against this badessment of BAFA Tesla is now legally before and prosecuted for information of WELT in the Federal Republic of Germany. This is the next step in escalating the subsidy dispute. The German subsidiary of the US automaker filed a lawsuit against the Federal Republic of Germany with the Frankfurt Administrative Court because the Model S was not on the list of eligible vehicles between December 2017 and early March 2018. This confirmed a spokesman for the world court. Claim 11 K 1740/18 was filed in April of this year. Until now, however, there is no written justification, the deadline expires at the end of this month. Tesla hopes to be able to prevent by the legal clarification also that the BAFA recovers incentive bonuses already paid by the automaker's customers. On Tuesday, the agency announced that about 800 customers having purchased a Model S before March 6, 2018 and received the environmental premium will have to repay $ 2,000.

In total, BAFA received 834 requests by November 30 already approved on the incentive award for a Tesla Model S. They must repay the money now because they 're lending it. misunderstood The Authority was forced to claim the premium for "administrative and budgetary needs," said BAFA. He tried for months to talk with Tesla, but that did not succeed

"The arbitrary decision to temporarily remove Tesla from the list of vehicles eligible for the environmental bonus was unjustified. of the support program and was unfair to our customers, "Tesla says.

The automaker also refers to the price limit, which was deliberately set by the German government at a level to exclude Tesla cars from the promotion, so Tesla had wanted to complain to the European Commission but had then found a compromise with the German government to offer the basic model that could be promoted.

Tesla announced that it would appeal against BAFA's decision to recover the incentive from customers who requested the bonus before adding the Model S to the catalog of eligible vehicles. But it is not so easy, because according to the authorities, Tesla, as a manufacturer, can not oppose the notifications. "The participants in the administrative procedure are the plaintiffs, that is Tesla's customers," said BAFA at the request of WELT. "They can appeal against the decision of the BAFA." Each individual buyer should therefore act against the refund notice.

The amount must be repaid in principle in the month following the receipt of the wrongful decision to receive, so the BAFA. However, Tesla announced that the company "will ensure that this decision does not harm our customers until March 2018."

Tesla will be able to recover: after all, there is a maximum of 1000 customers who are already receiving money or have applied for the premium, but have not been approved. Even if the car manufacturer of each of these customers accepts the 2000 euros, that the state does not want to pay, it only represents about two million euros. An amount that is boring for Tesla, but manageable. Perhaps that was the reason why the Musk dispute was not worth tweeting.