AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)08/16 Report--

VinFast, a Vietnamese electric car maker, was officially listed on NASDAQ in the United States on Aug. 15, and its share price rose 254.64% to as high as $38.78 in intraday trading, surpassing GM and Mercedes-Benz to become the world's fifth largest carmaker by market capitalization (Tesla, Toyota, Porsche, BYD).

Who's Vinfast? Vinfast, founded in 2017, is Vietnam's first major carmaker and the first Vietnamese car brand to enter the global market. It is part of the Vingroup Group and its major shareholder is Vietnam's richest man, Pham Nhat Vuong.

Pan Riwang earned his first bucket of gold in 1993 when he founded Technocom Food Co., Ltd. in Ukraine and launched the fast food brand Divina, which was exported to about 30 countries around the world. In 2002, Pan Riwang returned to Vietnam, first founded Vincom-- in Hanoi to develop large shopping malls, high-end offices and apartments, and then founded Vinpear-- to build tourism and entertainment real estate projects such as five-star hotels, luxury resorts, beach villas, water parks and golf courses. In 2012, he merged Vincom and Vinpear and renamed it Vingroup. Vingroup Group is one of the largest conglomerates in Vietnam, with operations in many areas such as real estate, automotive, retail and health care, accounting for 2.2 per cent of Vietnam's GDP in 2022. With Vingroup, Pan Riwang became the richest man in Vietnam and the first Vietnamese boss to appear on the Forbes rich list, known as "Vietnam Li Ka Shing."

Soon, the richest man also set his sights on building cars. Before Pan Riwang established VinFast in Gehai County in the remote countryside in 2017, there was no real national auto company in Vietnam by market capitalization. As Vietnam's first auto brand, Vinfast shoulders the hope of Vietnam's auto renaissance, and Pan Riwang directly regards Tesla as a target company.

Looking back at VinFast's car-building process, few people may know that the power core of its first model, the LUX A2.0, is actually the BMW BMW N20 turbocharged engine, which was discontinued in 2017. a large amount of cost makes it not cheap and has received a mediocre response in the Vietnamese market. Since then, VinFast began to seek cooperation from foreign companies to launch a small hatchback called Fadil, which was based on GM's Opel Karl Rocks,VinFast, which pushed its price to 120000 yuan and eventually became popular in Vietnam. In 2020, VinFast ranked among the top five car sales in Vietnam, second only to Hyundai, Toyota, Kia and Honda.

In 2021, VinFast launched its first electric model, VF e34, and extended a series of models, including VF 5, VF 6, VF 7, and VF 8 and VF 9, covering a wide range of models from A to D. In early 2022, Le Thi Thu Thuy, global chief executive of VinFast, announced that VinFast would become a manufacturer of pure electric vehicles.

VinFast is often called "Asian Tesla". The reason is that domestic Ulay, Xiaopeng and ideals are limited to the domestic market and have only begun to go out to sea in recent years, while VinFast has set its sights on the global market since its inception, with a layout from research and development, production to sales and marketing.

As early as July 2018, VinFast set up a German branch in Frankfurt and an European branch in Paris shortly afterwards. In November 2021, VinFast set up its US headquarters in Los Angeles. In March 2022, VinFast announced the construction of an electric vehicle production plant and a battery production plant in North Carolina. Biden posted on his US President's Twitter account that VinFast had invested US $4 billion in building the plant, which would create about 7000 jobs in the United States.

Compared with Wei Xiaoli, the market size of VinFast is far smaller than that of its Chinese rivals, but its planned plant in the US and its global layout provide more room for imagination for its company's value, which may be the main reason for its soaring share price on its first day of trading. It is understood that the starting price of VinFast VF 8 is 46000 US dollars, and that of VinFast VF 9 is 56000 US dollars, which is only half that of Tesla's Model X standard Tesla.

Like many new power car companies, VinFast is still losing money. VinFast posted a loss of $2.1 billion in 2022, with a total loss of $5.4 billion since its inception. In addition, VinFast issued a recall in May involving 999 VF8 models because of software errors in the display screen that prevented critical safety information from being displayed and could increase the risk of a crash.

It is really hard to say whether VinFast will come to the Chinese market in the future. At present, China is the world's largest market for new energy vehicles, and while the pressure of competition is huge, it also contains more development opportunities. Although the cake has been almost divided by BYD, Tesla, Ian, Wei Xiaoli and other enterprises, but there are still many foreign companies desperately squeezing inside, like a picture of heroes competing. Perhaps, no one is willing to lag behind.

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