Since the US federal rebate is applied to taxes owed when a person files their income tax, not everyone gets the full amount. As a result, I don't think the US Federal tax rebate has had the same kind of response as Ontario's rebate. Consequently, it doesn't seem like the manufacturers put a huge amount of weight in the tax rebate incentive in their strategies for selling EVs.
Tesla adds the rebate into their quotes as an "estimated saving" along with fuel savings. Considering they're already near the 200,000 mark for EVs sold, at which point the credit drops off, and that there's some 350,000 orders for the Model 3 (including those who've cancelled by now), there will be more than a few unhappy customers when the time comes for them to actually try and claim their credit. This is a real issue that is just one more unknown in the adoption of EVs, Teslas in particular.
By the time the dreadnought factory comes alive, if ever, the one-year countdown for Tesla's credit elimination will hopefully not have started so they can get at least those US orders filled within the year and buyers may be placated by the 50% or 25% of the $7500 credit they thought they were going to get. If we start to see Tesla refuse to take money for US orders around the time their 199,999th US car would be sold, we'll know why.
It's almost as if Elon conceived of the dreadnought production concept around the idea of a one-year window for the tax credit to wind down. You want to chuck out as many cars as possible in that window of opportunity so a fully automated high-speed operation is the only way to go. No one ever called Elon dumb.
To answer GGs question though, it would be hard to transfer much of the brand equity (not to mention stock equity) contained in the Tesla name to another company, but maybe Elon can pull it off with another one of his plainspoken speeches about the picture perfect society we can all expect to live in if all we do is buy his products.
