Vietnamese EV startup VinFast is trying to get into the electric pickup truck game, as it revealed a new concept called the VF Wild at CES 2024 in Las Vegas. The company announced it also plans to start selling its smallest EV, the VF3, outside of Vietnam, as previously hinted.
It’s hard to say much more about what VinFast has planned for both vehicles, though. The truck will have mid-size pickup dimensions, and a folding mid-gate to allow the five-foot bed to turn into something functionally closer to an eight-foot bed (when the rear seats are down). But the company didn’t share its ambitions for range or pricing, or even when (or if) it plans to mass-produce the thing. It’s a CES concept car in the truest sense — down to the fact that the company did not even have official images of it ready at the time of its launch Tuesday.
The VF3 is a plucky little EV that VinFast announced in Vietnam earlier this year. It’s a two-door city car with limited range and an affordable price tag (think sub-$20,000). It has yet to ship in VinFast’s home country, but the company now says it will sell the car globally. It did not say which countries will be first, or share any other info about what a global launch would look like.
Developing a truck and globally launching a compact EV aren’t even the biggest things on VinFast’s plate. The company is also trying to build factories in North Carolina, Indonesia and India, and has multiple other models in the works.
If this all sounds a little haphazard, then it’s pretty in-character for VinFast. The young company — which is backed by Vietnam’s richest man, Pham Nhat Vuong — has been a little all over the place since its founding in 2017.
VinFast originally built combustion-engine vehicles but quickly pivoted to EVs, starting with the VF8 SUV, which it rather quickly tried bringing to the United States. That rollout has not gone well, as the VF8 was met with very poor reviews. VinFast has struggled to sell the SUV at scale in the U.S. The company recently pivoted to working with dealers to boost sales here.
Globally, the overwhelming majority of VinFast’s EV sales have been to a taxi company owned by Vuong. Oh, and he recently took over as VinFast’s CEO, the latest in a series of shakeups across its many different divisions.
This post has been updated with photos of the VF Wild from the CES show floor.
Comment