6 minute read
Vim, Vigor, and Vin
N E W K I D O N T H E B L O C K By Elana Scherr
Vietnam’s first car company is going all-electric, and worldwide, at full speed.
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The Fast in the VinFast name is an acronym in Vietnamese, but it’ s not lost on us, or the company ’ s founders, that in English it suggests something done quickly. The new Vietnamese automotive brand was announced in the fall of 2017, and barely a year later, VinFast had three gasoline-powered cars in development and an electric-scooter factory. By the summer of 2019, the company had built an 827-acre complex in Hai Phong and was delivering its first cars. In 2021, founder Pham Nhat Vuong announced that VinFast would begin pivoting to EVs. Now it’ s selling electric scooters, electric buses, and the VF e34, a small electric SUV, with promises of two larger versions to come, the VF8 and the VF9. The mid-size, five-seat VF8 and the seven-seat VF9 will not only come to the U.S. market but will be built here, in a new factory at a 1976-acre North Carolina site. The goal, says Pham, is to make VinFast a recognizable name worldwide and, you guessed it, do it fast.
A SHINY NEW FACTORY
We visited VinFast’ s Hai Phong plant in Vietnam. There, workers and robots build combustion-engine cars as well as the new EVs. In the battery shop, cells purchased primarily from Samsung and LG are tested and assembled into packs. Motors are also built in-house. VinFast aims to deliver two new models by the end of this year and produce nearly 100,000 cars annually by 2026. That’ s a big number to achieve in a short time, but accelerated growth is not new to VinFast. The factory site was coastal swampland in 2017, yet the plant was up and running in 21 months—too fast for digital cartography to keep up. At press time, Google Maps showed the VinFast campus as being in the bay. We can report it’ s on dry land.
DRIVING THE 2023 VF8
The Tesla Model Y–sized VF8 is the smaller of the two models planned for the U.S. and is further along in development than the three-row VF9. We were able to briefly get behind the wheel of a few VF8 prototypes that were assembled for our visit. Each machine had development quirks that were obvious even on our two-block drive. One had a jumpy accelerator; another was
Italian firms Pininfarina and Torino Design styled the VF8, which will be built in Vietnam and the U.S.
Fast Food
VinFast founder Pham Nhat Vuong likes instant results. No child of inheritance, Pham grew up poor in Hanoi, where his mother ran a modest tea shop. Pham moved to Ukraine, where he started a noodle restaurant. It became popular enough to spin off into an instant-soup company. laggy. Then there was a seat with reversed controls—when we went to slide it forward, it smashed the knees of the guy in the back. Most of the promised driver ’ s aids, such as remote summon and self-parking, were nonfunctional.
Prototype bugs aside, the cars felt promising overall. With 349 horsepower and 369 pound-feet of torque, the Eco model provided adequate acceleration, and the 402-hp Plus trim was downright quick. Our route had only one turn, and we took it fast enough to dump the engineer ’ s notes into the passenger footwell, so apologies to him, but we have no complaints about steering. Chief engineer Huy Chieu says adjustable regeneration will be ready for production, with one-pedal driving likely down the line. The all-wheel-drive car—the only version we ’ll get stateside—offers two battery-pack options on each trim level, with range estimates from 248 to 292 miles using the optimistic WLTP scale.
The exterior is standard SUV with some striking details: A long LED strip leads to a V in the nose, and the bodywork ducts air around the front wheels. Inside, VinFast made the Tesla-like decision to eliminate instrumentation in front of the driver, who instead must rely on the large central screen
The Fast in VinFast is an acronym that translates to style, safety, creativity, pioneer—Pham Nhat Vuong’s goals for his company.
VinFast is trying a risky sales strategy where the battery is a separate lease from the purchase price.
We approve of the traditional round steering wheel. Center screen is right out of the Tesla Model 3’s playbook.
and the head-up display. Our sample car was finished in a deep-blue leather, but other than that pop of color, it’ s typical textured plastics. When asked about the choice of faux-carbon and gloss-black trim instead of more experimental materials or those reflecting the automaker ’ s culture (as we ’ re seeing with Volvo and Genesis), David Lyon, director of design, looked mildly exasperated. “What, like bamboo? People here would see that and say
‘It’ s a weed!’” Even with lackluster touchpoints, the interior is comfortable. Cargo room seems on par with similarly sized vehicles, and there ’ s a small frunk in addition to the hatch.
COMING TO AMERICA
VinFast has done well in Vietnam, where customers are excited to have a homegrown option, with prices that are lower than Korean and Japanese competitors ’ . But bringing the brand worldwide may prove to be a challenge. VinFast will have to overcome the stigma of being a new company from a country not known for automotive industry, something that took Kia several decades. Pham wants to manage it in only one.
There also may be some customer confusion around pricing. A base of $40,000 seems reasonable, but the price goes up because buyers lease the battery separately, with a monthly fee. VF8 drivers pay $35 with a cap of 310 miles per month or $110 with no mileage limit. VinFast says the subscription addresses consumer concerns about battery life, but we think it just complicates an EV purchase. It’ s possible VinFast is having second thoughts as well. The company followed its announcement of the plan with the addendum that customers will have a choice of battery subscription or purchase by 2024. L E A D I N G T H E C H A R G E
Everyone we spoke with at VinFast, when asked about the driving force behind the company’s ambitions and quick pace, pointed to the chairman, Pham Nhat Vuong. Pham was born in Vietnam, studied in Moscow, and worked in the food industry in Ukraine, eventually starting a dehydrated-products company that he sold to Nestle. He returned to his homeland, where he opened a chain of resorts and became Vietnam’s first billionaire. Today Pham oversees the Vingroup empire of hotels, apartments, factories, business parks, and medical research.
He says there are similarities between where he started and where he’s going. When he pitched instant noodles in Ukraine, people couldn’t believe that simply pouring boiling water over them would cook them. “It took a year of marketing to convince them, ” he says. “Selling a car is more challenging, but the idea is the same. We need to convince them we have a better offering with style, design, technology, and smart services. ” His goal is to make VinFast a leader in the EV market. “Maybe not in five years, but in 10? We want to be at the top. ”
