VinFast, the vehicle manufacturing arm of Vingroup, Vietnam’s largest conglomerate, said on Thursday that the firm is set to build new EV plants in Germany and the United States, as the firm plans to retire production of gas-powered vehicles and transition fully to EVs by late 2022.
Currently, the carmaker is searching for the location of its German plant, which will produce electric vehicles and buses. “Europe is among the most important markets for VinFast,” said Le Thi Thu Thuy, Vingrop’s vice chairwoman and VinFast’s global CEO in a press release, adding that Germany, as Europe’s largest economy, will be a “crucial milestone” in VinFast’s plans in Europe.
The news comes shortly after the firm announced plans to build a new EV factory in the US, aiming to start full production by the end of 2024, per Bloomberg. Thuy told Bloomberg that the facility will be capable of manufacturing 250,000 vehicles a year, and will also be involved in battery and electric bus production, with an initial investment of USD 1 billion to USD 1.5 billion.
Apart from its existing manufacturing complex in Vietnam’s port city of Haiphong, the firm added that a new EV battery pack plant located within the Vung Ang Economic Zone of Vietnam’s Ha Tinh Province has been under construction since December 2021.
The battery plant, with a total investment of over VND 4 trillion (USD 174 million), will have the capability to produce 100,000 battery packs per year in its first phase of operation. The plant is expected to expand its production to cover full manufacture capabilities for battery cells, and ramp up its production capacity to 1 million battery packs per year in phase two, but VinFast did not share a concrete timeline.
In November 2021, VinFast debuted two of its electric SUVs—VF e35 and VF e36—at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November. With pre-orders available from January 5, the two models have been renamed as VF 8 and VF 9, respectively, with prices ranging from USD 41,000 to USD 56,000.
On Tuesday, Israeli EV battery firm StoreDot snapped USD 80 million in the first close of its Series D funding round, led by VinFast. The fresh capital will be utilized to support StoreDot’s research and development for its silicon-dominant extreme fast charge (XFC) battery cells for electric vehicles, as well as ramping up its California-based R&D, with a target of full mass cell production in 2024.