> Someone had a better suggestion in a comment chain above, which is that it's the responsibility of the dealer to request the rebate on behalf of the customer,

> Someone had a better suggestion in a comment chain above, which is that it's the responsibility of the dealer to request the rebate on behalf of the customer, and they apparently submit them in batches. So an even more plausible explanation is that it's a combination of people rushing to buy before the rebate expires, and the Tesla dealerships panicking to get all their paperwork for the last month or two submitted before the money ran out. Which still entails dealerships covering 4% of the national population to account for 18% of last year's national sales in a fairly short time frame, and also piles on the deeply unlikely claim that Tesla was paying out these rebates without bothering to file them for months on end.