While acknowledging that VinFast faces stiff challenges as an unknown brand in a highly competitive market, the automaker also has a track record of beating the odds, Nguyen said.
VinFast was founded in 2017, started making gasoline vehicles in 2019 and delivered its first EV domestically in 2021 while announcing plans for two others, the midsize VF 8 crossover and three-row VF 9.
This year, it began producing the smaller VF 6 and VF 7 in Vietnam after phasing out gasoline cars last year.
“When people know about us, know who we are, know about our product, I think they will like it,” Nguyen said during a media event in San Diego. “There will be more reservations and orders when the brand awareness is higher in this market, when people know about us more,” she said.
For now, VinFast has 17,000 reservations for the VF 8 and VF 9 in the U.S. and Canada combined, the company said. Since December, VinFast has imported about 2,100 VF 8 vehicles for sale in California, the automaker’s first U.S. market, and 800 for sale in Canada. Most of them arrived in May and have not been delivered.
Nguyen spends most of her time in Raleigh, N.C., where she is also CEO of the company’s new factory arm, VinFast Manufacturing US LLC, rather than at the company’s North American headquarters in Los Angeles. She said the brand will expand from its current 14 retail locations in California to 28 by the end of this year and later branch out to additional U.S. markets.
Earlier in the month, VinFast announced new financing from Vingroup founder Pham Nhat Vuong, Vietnam’s richest person. It also announced a planned U.S. listing on the Nasdaq. The listing, through a merger with Black Spade Acquisition Co., is expected to close in the second half of the year, the company said.
The funding, including up to $2.5 billion from Vuong and Vingroup, is needed for the automaker’s expansion into North America and Europe as it bets on global markets for rapid growth.
VinFast announced this week it will also expand in Asian markets.
