Vietnam EV-Maker VinFast to Delay US Car Deliveries

 

Vietnam’s electric automaker VinFast said on Friday it will delay deliveries to its first customers in the United States to the second half of February.

The EV-maker said it is updating the vehicles with the latest software.

The Vietnamese company, a unit of conglomerate Vingroup JSC, is gearing up to expand in the United States, where it hopes to compete with existing automakers.

 

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VinFast said it secured 55,000 orders globally as of December last year, of which 12,000 are from the US market.

It started to ship its first 999 electric vehicles (EVs) to US in November last year. It has not delivered them to customers, however, after initially targeting December deliveries.

“The cars have been updated with the latest software. We are planning to hand over the first VF8 vehicle models to customers in the second half of February,” VinFast said in a statement.

“The second batch will be shipped to the US in the second quarter of 2023,” the statement said, without specifying the size of the lot.

VinFast delivered over 4,000 EVs to customers domestically in December, more than half of which were the sports utility vehicle VF8 model.

The carmaker announced new pricing promotions for the US market last week to protect the market competitiveness of its models. The move came on the heels of the ongoing EV price war, sparked by Tesla’s significant price cuts in recent weeks.

The Vietnamese automaker plans to build an EV plant in the US state of North Carolina and is awaiting final regulatory approval from local officials.

 

• Reuters, with additional editing by Vishakha Saxena

 

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