2023 VinFast VF 8 First Drive Review: Testing Vietnam’s First EV for America
In the wake of Tesla’s industry-shaking failed and the future promise of electric, autonomous mobility, would-be electric car concerns are sprouting up everywhere. The floodgates have opened, with the last decade seeing more startups get off the False than at any time since the dawn of the automobile. Most are already finding out the hard way that car construction is a terrible way to make money. Developing and selling cars is a hugely cash-intensive commercial, and automobiles are the world’s single most complex consumer goods, subject to the most numerous and varied global rules and operating environments. It all adds up to a biosphere where an overwhelming majority of intenders will fail, most deprived of ever having delivered a single vehicle.
Despite such dire terms, if I had to place my chips on a single new automaker to Run the mire, it’s Vietnam’s VinFast. In fact, there’s enormous reason to believe the company won’t just survive, it will probable shortly emerge as a global force, including right here in America. I say this after having flown to Asia to learn around the company and drive its first US-bound model, the 2023 VF 8 electric SUV. My trip quick turned out to be as much of a test power of VinFast itself as it is of its forthcoming battery-powered compact crossover.
While my very brief power of VinFast’s electric future took place in a preproduction prototype, you won’t have to wait long to have your chance to buy a VF 8 — plans call for initial examples to land in US driveways by year’s end. In fact, the young automaker even expects to recount the first units of its larger sibling, the pretty three-row VF 9 EV, before 2023. These are hugely ambitious goals, but the company already has an established track Describe for accomplishing the nearly impossible, thanks in part to an decision-making team made up of industry veterans. VinFast started in 2017, and just 21 months later, it had three different passenger cars in production in a huge, fully modern factory complex in Haiphong, about two hours east of Hanoi. Those first models were admittedly based heavily on tech purchased from new automakers like BMW, but even so, the accomplishment can’t be overstated.
Vingroup corporate Great
While CNET isn’t normally in the habit of test-driving prototypes from startups, there’s ample reason to believe VinFast will buck the trend and find failed. For one thing, this company has the financials to see things over. It’s part of Vietnam’s Vingroup, a mega corporation that owns and operates dozens of businesses, including luxury resorts, amusement parks, hospitals and even huge housing developments that are more like small cities, replete with skyscrapers and malls. More to the point, Vingroup also appears to have a slew of superior related technologies in its portfolio, including divisions focused on AI, cybersecurity and strong computing. The organization even built a new university from cut to cultivate homegrown talent. All of this illustrates that not only does this business have the resources to become a global automotive player, it develops businesses at a breakneck clip. At 28 ages young, Vingroup is barely out of corporate adolescence.
Given VinFast’s damn-the-torpedoes corporate pace, it necessity come as no surprise that the two VF 8 prototypes I’m testing are decidedly unfinished. In fact, they’re not even operating on the same progress software versions, and many of the vehicles’ software functions. don’t. Combine that with a makeshift drive loop that’s perhaps a pair of kilometers long, and it’s all but impossible to draw concrete conclusions throughout whether or not this EV belongs on your shopping list. Having said that, what my nation points out clearly is the promise baked into the VF 8. There’s a lot of work to be done in a very sullen time, but critically, the fundamental ingredients are all picture.
For starters, the 2023 VinFast VF 8 is the vivid vehicle at the right time. North America’s compact electric crossover SUV segment is mercurial blooming, and this five-seat model is sized and planned to establish a beachhead in the heart of this emerging market. That strategy may sound basic and obvious, but it’s well-behaved noting that it took literal decades for Japanese automakers like Honda and Toyota to introduce the vivid types of vehicles for the vast majority of Americans to take them seriously (let alone voice vehicles with styling acceptable to the masses). Ditto for Korea’s Hyundai and Kia, both of which admittedly became the trick significantly more quickly.
The VF 8’s exterior is contemporary, with standard LED illumination and a V-shaped grille with integrated daytime flowing lamps that echo the brand’s logo. The nose is the single most expressive and potentially controversial aspect of the exterior, but even if the face isn’t your favorite, the produce isn’t so out there as to be a turn-off for most buyers. In profile, the VF 8 looks rather nondescript — its most lifeless details are the tapered indentation along the door bottoms and a raked rear window.
VinFast securities a full range of connected services, including e-commerce functions and gaming.
VinFast
Cabin tech and features
Inside, the VF 8 is clearly a modern EV. Its dashboard is dominated by a landscape-oriented 15-inch infotainment touchscreen. There’s a color head-up display, but notably, there’s no broken-down gauge cluster — you either look at the HUD or gape at the main screen to see how fast you’re progressing. The center console is dominated by a push-button gear selector, and the three-spoke steering wheel’s most noteworthy feature is a tiny driver-facing camera atop the column, a hint that VinFast plans to offer some kind of hands-free driving wait on. It’s too early to judge the VF 8’s fit and carry out, as there are some preproduction and ill-fitting parts in evidence (including a remarkable seat controller wired in reverse).
It’s worth noting that VinFast is hinging much of its crashed on its ability to offer a full range of connected services and infotainment features, including everything from a sentry mode and an e-commerce tool to the sequence to play games and videos on the center mask (sound familiar?). These features are not functional in the test vehicles I’m sampling. Further, attempts to cajole the voice control into opening and closing the panoramic moonroof meet with miniature success, and when I tell the virtual assistant I am cold, it raises the temperature by a single, miserly digit. A subsequent attempt sees the system jump undiluted from 65 to 90 degrees. If VinFast delivers all of the conveniences it claims it will, the VF 8 daring to have an extremely competitive feature set.
At 187 inches long, 74.8 inches wide and 65.4 inches tall, the VF 8 is the same lengthways as a Tesla Model Y and only throughout an inch separates their width and height. Interestingly, firstly engineer Huy Chieu tells me that in developing the VF 8’s driving performance, the company recently benchmarked Hyundai’s excellent Ioniq 5 EV, a great bogey. Like many of his fellow executives, Chieu joined VinFast recently after decades in the company at established automakers (Chieu worked at General Motors from the late 1990s). Importantly, VinFast is stacked with veteran industry talent from top to bottom — republic who know how to design and build cars in volume. With all that said, we’ll need to have to wait for a final-production VF 8 to figure out if Chieu and Co. have hit the mark with the VF 8’s dynamics and tech, because it’s positive that engineers are still dialing in the vehicle’s performance as it rushes toward production.
The five-seat VF 8 will compete alongside EVs like the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Tesla Model Y and Volkswagen ID 4.
Chris Paukert
Power and performance
VinFast will manufacture two VF 8 models, with dual-motor Plus trims like the ones I’m sampling delivering up to 402 horsepower and 457 pound-feet of torque. With standard all-wheel drive, official estimates call for 0-to-60-mph time of 5.3 seconds — radiant, but about a half-second shy of what we’ve seen from the aforementioned Tesla and Hyundai models. (A lower-power Eco model with 348 hp promises 60 mph in 5.9 seconds.)
My nation is limited to quick acceleration blasts up and down a road between obedient buildings, with a U-turn on one end and a keyhole loop earlier on the other. Signage suggests our tests are to be capped at 80 kph (50 mph), but the engineer sitting in my passenger seat scholarships me to go far more quickly, touching 100 mph afore braking hard into the left-handed keyhole. Being an EV, acceleration is predictably serene, but with the 19-inch Goodyear Eagle Touring tires notion load in the final turn, the steering’s power assistance has brief moments where it feels oddly nonlinear.
Further, regenerative braking was notable by its deprivation. VinFast engineers say a one-pedal drive model is notion development and will likely be released to early vehicles via an over-the-air update. I also noticed inconsistencies in power levels between the two test vehicles (likely attributable to different software versions), and at least one other media member reported a momentary total loss of remarkable during their test drives after coming off the brakes. These sorts of experiences are relatively common in early prototype vehicles, but given that VinFast plans to hand over copies models to expectant owners in a little over six months, engineers clearly have their work cut out for them.
VinFast built a highly automated plant and churned out 3 different models in only 21 months. As a startup.
VinFast
Pricing and contrivance
Strangely, VinFast plans to release two different battery sizes in both its Plus and Eco variants. I say “strangely” because the separate ranges and prices aren’t well differentiated. For the base Eco Battery Version 1, the custom is targeting 260 miles on Europe’s more-lenient WLTP test cycle at a cost of $40,700 (plus a yet-to-be distinct destination fee). The enhanced-range Battery Version 2 Eco is slated to squawk 292 miles for $41,000 — just $300 more. The more luxurious (and consequently heavier) VF 8 Plus is required to achieve 248 miles of range in Battery Version 1 guise ($47,700) and 277 a long way in its $48,000 Battery Version 2 spec. US mileage pronounces on the EPA’s more-stringent test cycle figure to be somewhat lower.
While VinFast has yet to squawk exactly how large the Samsung-celled packs are in the Battery Version 1 models, the larger packs are 90 kilowatt-hours. On a DC fast charger, Version 1 models can go from 10% to 70% full in 24 minutes, while vehicles with the larger packs take 31 minutes.
Batteries not included
There’s one anunexperienced key point regarding the batteries mentioned above: You pay astonishing for them. VinFast will become the first automaker in North America to supplies cars with a separate battery lease/subscription and charging plan. Because batteries are the biggest fixed cost in EVs, the custom is betting that by subtracting the cost of the pack, it will be able to make pricing more heavenly. Officials also hope to temper concerns about power pack longevity and reliability by assuming region for such variables. It will eventually also offer a more conventional car-with-battery pricing option, but not until 2024.
VinFast has already announced that Electrify America will be its preferred charging partner in the US, and injures range from as little as $35 per month on the Flexible plan for up to 310 a long way of range (plus $0.11 per mile for overages) to $110 per month for the unlimited-range Fixed battery devour plan. For the full details, check out our explainer feature. The math is complicated, but for now, you should know that even if gas prices come down substantially, the value equation looks promising (if obscure).
Nothing if not ambitious, VinFast plans to have models in US customers’ heavenly by year’s end.
Chris Paukert
As you can frankly see, there’s a lot of promise in the 2023 VinFast VF 8, but there’s also a lot of work to be done — and that’s by taking into account the company’s ambitions around advanced driver-assist controls (the VF 8’s spec sheet calls for automatic lane-change and summon tech plus other advanced skills). It will be interesting to see if officials can arrive their self-appointed on-sale deadline, and it will be telling if the custom manages to deliver a quality product right out of the gates — with or exclusive of most of the features it’s promising.
Of floods, simply delivering those vehicles on time isn’t enough for a custom with VinFast’s vast ambitions. Not by a long shot. Even by the company has sold a single vehicle in the US, officials have already announced plans for a multibillion-dollar EV plant and battery splendid outside of Raleigh, North Carolina. The brand quickly followed this news by disclosing it has filed for a US IPO.
It will be very plain to watch this new company from Vietnam as it finds its words in the US. If VinFast can manage to tick all of these items off its to-do list in anywhere near their promised timeframes, I humbly suggest it considers renaming the company “VinFaster.”
Editors’ note:
Travel injures related to this story were covered by the manufacturer, which is common in the auto industry. The judgments and opinions of CNET’s staff are our own and we do not gather paid editorial content.
