Vietnamese Electric Car Vinfast Listed on Nasdaq

Vietnam now has its own electric vehicle manufacturer. Vinfast is the name of a company that wants to compete with Tesla and got listed on the Nasdaq on August 15th.

After an amazing first day for Vinfast, when it surpassed Mercedes and BMW in capitalization, there was an equally rapid fall in the stock quote on the second day, but the challenge was thrown. In what promises to be quite a buoyant electric car market, there is now a Vietnamese competitor.

Its owner is Pham Nhat Vuong, Vietnam’s richest man, who earned $39 billion just on the first day of listing: the shares of Vinfast Auto rose 255%. But the division that produces electric vehicle is just one of VinGroup’s divisions, a conglomerate that operates in real estate, retail, consumer electronics, private healthcare, and artificial intelligence. The group is worth over 2% of Vietnam’s GDP.

The brand is ambitious: it has just opened a plant in North Carolina, USA, and 122 showrooms around the world. Management is still looking for new investors to enter all markets. Vinfast models are already on sale in France and Germany, but Italy will have to wait until 2024 for someone to buy a Vietnamese Tesla. In order to finance customers from the Old Continent, the manufacturer will rely on CA Auto Bank (formerly FCA Bank) of the Credit Agricole group. The two models currently on sale in Europe are two SUVs called VF 8 and VF 9 (the first one costs over 40,000 euros and the second one almost 60,000 euros) that were designed by Pininfarina. Three more models, which will be invented by the creatives of Torino Design, are on the way.