Electric cars, even Vietnam has its say. The VinFast case
Stock market rally for the Vietnamese brand Vinfast in its debut on the Nasdaq. The driving tycoon intends to boost 2023 volumes sevenfold, but was less than halfway there in July. What surprises will this new aggressive house that comes from the East reserve?
The electric car market has been stormed by dozens, perhaps hundreds, of startups. Not all of them will make it to the end of the year, many have already closed, others are in crisis . Not all of them are American or Chinese. Among the most sprinting brands that no one knows at the moment but that everyone could soon find themselves pronouncing is certainly the Vietnamese VinFast, capable, at least on the stock market, of real rallies.
VINFAST'S DEBUT ON THE NASDAQ
As well underlined by the Confindustria newspaper, the brand's debut on the Nasdaq resulted in a capitalization of over 85 billion dollars, more than Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes and double that of Ford and GM. It is not the first time that the car giants have been ousted by the capital raised by former startups: the most striking case is obviously that of Tesla.
It is the first time, however, that the brand in question is not American or even European or Chinese (we point out, however, that already at the end of the session the value had dropped to 67 billion, which brought VinFast back behind the German giants but still ahead of the big USA ).
“There is a reason, they explain from the Sun : VinFast merged with the Spac (special purpose acquisition company) Black Spade but more than 90% of the Spac investors withdrew before the completion of the operation, according to Spac Research . This left very few shares available for trading (the founder controls almost all of them) and set the stage for abnormal price movements.”
THE AMBITION OF THE VIETNAMESE Scrooge
VinFast is a startup born in 2017 in Hanoi by the will of the tycoon and founder Pham Nhat Vuong (nicknamed by the media as the Vietnamese Elon Musk) determined to demonstrate that even his country can have its say when it comes to electric cars, although it has debuted with an endothermic propulsion model.
And Vuong like Musk has his hands in the dough almost everywhere. VinFast is in fact part of the VinGroup conglomerate, one of the largest in the country (worth over 2% of GDP) active in the real estate, retail, consumer electronics and health sectors. And now, of course, the electric car.
Its means, unlike Tesla, intend to be "for all budgets": its VF8 sports SUV will initially be available in France, Germany and the Netherlands at a price of 43,350 when to have a similar product baked by Elon Musk's House you need pay out a few tens of thousands of euros more.
VINFAST'S MOVES TO ENCOURAGE THE WEST
At Mobile World Congress 2022, the great Barcelona fair dedicated to telephony, it presented the VF 8 and VF 9 electric SUVs created in collaboration with Pininfarina to wink at the drivers of the States. And just in the USA last year it announced the investment of 2 billion dollars in a gigafactory inaugurated this summer in North Carolina, in the Triangle Innovation Point , an industrial area dedicated to innovation covering 2,150 acres in Moncure.
USA LOVE VIETNAM
An investment supported by the incentives that the Biden administration has made available for those who create jobs in the territory of the 50 states and who will then be able to take advantage of the aid from the anti-inflation body of legislation studied by the White House. And now, following in Tesla's footsteps, he would look to Germany for a gigafactory to be set up in the heart of the Old Continent.
According to numbers provided by the brand, VinFast has so far opened 122 showrooms worldwide, focusing on the US West Coast. On the other hand, in Vietnam the company has already established a charging network covering 63 cities and provinces and plans to expand it further in the coming years. Still "at home", the group took over the entire Vietnamese branch of General Motors, including the Chevrolet plant in Hanoi.
The young startup has already entered into several agreements with Western partners, from Pininfarina to BMW, up to Italdesign, the company of Giorgetto Giugiaro. Last May, the tycoon at the wheel of the Group said that VinFast intends to increase volumes sevenfold in 2023, reaching 50,000 electric vehicles this year after 7,400 in 2022. In July, it was below 20,000 global units, so it will have to accelerate in the second half of the year to keep up with the challenge.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/auto-elettriche-anche-il-vietnam-dice-la-sua-il-caso-vinfast/ on Thu, 17 Aug 2023 13:17:06 +0000.