Owner persists
We haven’t heard anything from Vinfast for a while, and that is of course not a good sign for the Vietnamese manufacturer. Of the limited number of cars that were ‘sold’ last year, no less than 80 percent also appear to remain with companies affiliated with Vinfast. However, the owner perseveres and continues to invest.
Vinfast has been around since 2017 and crossed over to Europe about a year ago. The brand is even attempting to gain a foothold in North America, which is certainly no small hurdle for a newcomer. Vinfast is not just a hobby club, but a division of industry giant VinGroup. That company was founded by Phan Nhat Vuong, who, according to Automotive News Europe, personally owns no less than 97 percent of Vinfast through direct and indirect interests.
Vuong takes the electric car business seriously and found partners in BMW (for previous models) and Pininfarina (for design), among others. Vinfast has fresh and modern-looking electric SUVs, but sales are not yet really going smoothly. Last year, 35,000 Vinfasts were sold worldwide. For comparison: in 2019, almost 31,000 Tesla Model 3s were sold in the Netherlands alone. What’s worse is that the vast majority of Vinfasts delivered simply stay within the family. Automotive News reports that no less than 70 percent of this number went to GSM, a taxi company that is also owned by VinGroup boss Vuong. Another 10 percent was for (parts of) VinGroup, and therefore actually remained internal. If this is true, only 7,000 Vinfasts would have gone to external customers in 2023. Ouch.
However, Mr. Vuong is not giving up and says he will invest another $1 billion in Vinfast from his own pocket. “The electric car market will continue to grow and will surpass the market for cars with combustion engines. I’m not giving up,” he says firmly.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl