Living in the same south east asian region as Vietnam, their aggressive and rapid expansion in the automotive scene is surprising and awe-inspiring. No other south east asian country has done what they’re doing at this scale.
Vietnam’s Vinfast is launching in the Philippines with an all-electric line up of vehicles. Initially it may seem like a risky maneuver as its a relatively small market but it also means that competition from the established Japanese brands is very very sparse.
Recently, Vinfast flew me, along with members of the Philippine automotive media to their home country to get a more intimate look at their inner workings.
State of the art manufacturing
We got to visit their factory. I’ve seen quite a few car assembly plants and Vinfast’s sprawling 335-hectare assembly plant is at least as big if not bigger than most of them. Assembly is 95% automated and almost everything is made in-house, including the stamping of the panels. It’s capable of producing 300,000 cars a year
Battery subscription
One area where Vinfast may trailblaze is with their battery subscription service. They will give you have the option of buying the car without the battery. And then you lease the battery. Since the battery is one of the most expensive parts of an EV, that should bring the prices down considerably. One more advantage of the system is that you dont have to worry about buying a new battery at the end of its life.
The Cars
While we were in Hanoi, We had the opportunity to drive Vinfast’s current vehicles. It was a short test drive, not enough to form a complete opinion on the vehicles but here are some of my initial impressions:
The VF9 is a full-size crossover SUV with a range of 482km and a power output of 402hp. It’s visually impressive due to its sheer size. It’s 5.1 meters long and low to the ground, it has seat massagers, a huge 15.6in screen, the interior feels quite premium and it wouldn’t look out of place parked next to a Ford Explorer.
The VF8 is the next biggest crossover in their lineup. I didn’t see any glaring faults during my short time with the vehicle, at least none worthy of a negative review.
The VF5 and lower models had a budget feel to them, at least when it comes to the interor. Which is ok if the pricing is also budget-oriented. At the time of this writing, we were not given prices
I’ll post my initial impressions of their other vehicles on a future video.
Overseas reception.
When vinfast initially launched the vf8 in the US, it was met with lukewarm reviews but they have taken the criticism and improved on them. Based on Doug Demuro’s review, it seems like the improvements are quite significant. During our trip, some representatives from the brand also sat down with us to know what they can improve for the Philippine market.
This is a company that’s hungry for feedback and is quick to respond to it.
Final thoughts:
Out trip to Vietnam gave us an intimate view into this gargantuan company, which not only makes cars, they’re also into real estate, education etc. It’s one of the biggest companies in Vietnam. Seeing how almost everything in Hanoi had their brand on it, it became a bit easier to understand how they acquired the capital to do what they’re doing at this scale.
Every new company has growing pains but what’s important is that they learn from those mistakes and improve. Which is what is Vinfast is doing.
Will they succeed? I dont know. I’ll have a better idea when we get the prices for their models. But from a south east asian country dweller, until we get our own, this feels like the home team. And i do hope that they succeed.
