Speed is of the essence at VinFast, the upstart carmaker hoping to become Vietnam’s answer to Tesla.
The company was founded just six years ago, when the site of its auto factory two hours from Hanoi was swampland. Now VinFast says the plant is capable of producing a quarter of a million vehicles a year, while the company is trying to break into the US market and is heading for a New York stock market listing this month.
“The pace VinFast applies to the business is out of this world, the name says it,” says Luis Gustavo Lemes Pereira, a 35-year-old Brazilian engineer who previously worked for companies such as Chery and General Motors, as he shows visitors around the company’s electric vehicle production line.