If Vingroup’s artificial cities outside Hanoi symbolize Vietnam’s new urban ambitions, the giant VinFast manufacturing complex near Hải Phòng represents something even more audacious: Vietnam’s attempt to build an entire automotive industry almost from scratch — and export it to the world.
Driving through the endless industrial campus on Cát Hải Island, one quickly realizes that VinFast is not merely another EV startup assembling imported parts in a warehouse.
Bigger than Tesla’s Berlin Gigafactory
The sheer scale feels closer to the industrial ecosystems built by Hyundai in South Korea or BYD in China: giant stamping presses, highly automated body shops, battery-pack assembly, electric motor production, logistics centers, supplier parks, bus assembly halls, scooter factories, and long final assembly lines where multiple vehicle models move side by side beneath endless rows of robots and conveyors.
The complex spans roughly 335 hectares — more than 3 square kilometers — and employs around 18,000 workers who operate in rotating shifts. To put that into perspective, BMW’s Leipzig factory covers roughly 250 hectares, Tesla’s Berlin Gigafactory around 300 hectares, while Volvo’s Ghent plant occupies barely a quarter of that surface.
VinFast says the Hải Phòng site was built in only 21 months, with an initial first-phase investment of around $1.5 billion.
The ambition is equally vast. VinFast’s long-term plans call for annual production capacity approaching one million vehicles, though more conservative estimates point to roughly 300,000 passenger cars and around half a million electric scooters per year, alongside electric buses for both domestic and export markets.
Yet perhaps the most remarkable aspect is that Vietnam barely possessed a modern passenger car industry only a decade ago. Now the country’s largest private conglomerate is trying to position itself as a global EV manufacturer competing directly with Tesla, BYD, Hyundai, Volkswagen, and Europe’s established automakers.
Not a speculative EV startup
Whether that ambition will succeed remains uncertain. But after visiting the Hải Phòng complex, it becomes difficult to dismiss VinFast as merely another speculative EV startup.
VinFast itself was founded only in 2017 by billionaire Phạm Nhật Vượng, the founder of Vingroup. Rather than slowly building automotive expertise over decades, the company effectively imported an entire global supply chain of knowledge at once.
Former executives from GM, BMW, and Magna Steyr were recruited to run operations. Austrian engineering specialist Magna Steyr helped develop the first vehicles, while Italian design house Pininfarina styled the early models. German suppliers provided manufacturing equipment, robotics, powertrain technology, and industrial automation.
During our visit, much of the technical presentation was led not by Vietnamese executives but by foreign automotive veterans recruited from the global industry.
One of them was Diego Ghirardi, VinFast’s Deputy Director of Commercial Platform Vehicle Program, whose background in vehicle development and industrial program coordination reflects the company’s broader strategy of importing international automotive expertise to accelerate its learning curve.
During discussions with European journalists, Ghirardi indicated that Belgium could become one of VinFast’s next European targets around 2027, following the restructuring of the company’s dealership network in the Netherlands.
Built on BMW expertise
The first VinFast gasoline cars were not entirely Vietnamese creations. The Lux A2.0 sedan and Lux SA2.0 SUV were heavily derived from older BMW platforms and engines, allowing the company to shortcut years of expensive engineering development.
Inside Vietnam, the strategy worked remarkably well. The models offered many consumers the image and engineering DNA of German premium cars at prices far below imported BMWs.
But the combustion era proved short-lived. By 2021, VinFast concluded that competing globally against Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, or BMW in conventional gasoline vehicles would be nearly impossible. Electric vehicles offered a rare industrial reset.
That strategy explains the enormous vertical integration visible throughout the Hải Phòng complex. Many European car factories today function mainly as final assembly plants, relying heavily on external suppliers. VinFast instead internalized far more of the production chain.
The industrial site includes giant press shops producing body panels, robotized body-in-white welding lines, fully automated paint shops, battery module and pack assembly, electric motor production, electronics integration, scooter manufacturing, electric bus assembly, and a supplier park covering some 700,000 square meters.
Much of the industrial equipment itself comes from established European suppliers. Siemens helped equip parts of the factory infrastructure and digital manufacturing systems, while ABB robotics is deployed throughout the production halls. Paint-shop systems were supplied in part by Germany’s Dürr, while drivetrain and chassis components rely heavily on ZF.
The supplier ecosystem itself is highly international, with VinFast working alongside Bosch, Siemens, ABB, ZF, CATL, Gotion, and numerous Asian and European component manufacturers.
In several halls, workers manually assemble battery systems and electronic components while nearby industrial robots weld body structures with minimal human intervention. The contrast reflects the hybrid nature of Vietnam’s industrialization itself: highly advanced automation layered onto a still relatively low-cost labor base.
Low-cost labor
Automation levels reportedly reach 90 percent in some sections of the plant, with more than 1,200 industrial robots operating across the site. Yet despite all that automation, thousands of workers still move continuously through the assembly halls, handling logistics, inspections, and final assembly operations.
Outside Europe, VinFast is often still perceived mainly as a niche EV startup. Inside Vietnam, however, the company’s ecosystem is far broader.
The domestic product lineup already stretches from the tiny VF3 city car to the large VF9 flagship SUV, alongside the VF5, VF6, VF7, electric scooters, buses, and commercial mobility vehicles.
Some of the most interesting models are not even available in Europe yet. The surprisingly charming VF3 is a tiny, boxy urban EV originally developed with emerging markets such as India in mind, while the VF7 crossover, arguably one of the most visually successful vehicles in the lineup, evokes a more compact interpretation of Kia’s EV6.
The real backbone of Vietnamese mobility nevertheless remains two-wheel transport. Hanoi alone counts roughly five million motorbikes. VinFast therefore became not only a car manufacturer, but also one of the country’s largest producers of electric scooters and e-bikes.
Meanwhile, sister companies complete the ecosystem. Green SM operates electric taxi fleets, VinBus runs electric public transport, and V-Green develops charging infrastructure, while Vingroup’s real estate projects increasingly integrate much of this mobility network into newly built urban districts.
That ecosystem creates one of VinFast’s biggest domestic advantages: charging infrastructure. Through V-Green, the wider Vingroup ecosystem claims one of Southeast Asia’s largest EV charging networks, with plans for around 150,000 charging ports nationwide.
Crucially, the network remains largely exclusive to VinFast vehicles, creating a protected domestic EV ecosystem in which foreign brands struggle to match VinFast’s charging convenience, fleet integration, service network, and political support.
Europe forms the next major test
VinFast officially entered Europe with the VF 8 electric SUV, followed more recently by the smaller VF 6 crossover. Both models are now offered in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
The VF 8 targets Europe’s fiercely contested mid-size electric SUV segment dominated by vehicles such as the Tesla Model Y, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, Volkswagen ID.4, and increasingly Chinese rivals from BYD and XPeng.
At roughly 4.75 meters long, the VF 8 offers all-wheel drive, up to 300 kW of power, an 87.7 kWh battery, and WLTP ranges approaching 470 kilometers depending on specification.
The smaller VF 6 follows a similar philosophy. Measuring around 4.24 meters long, the crossover combines a 59.6 kWh LFP battery with front-wheel drive and a WLTP range exceeding 400 kilometers.
VinFast positions both models aggressively on equipment and warranty rather than outright price. Long warranties, generous standard equipment, and relatively large batteries aim to position the company as a value-oriented alternative in Europe’s crowded EV market.
The company also hopes that “Made in Vietnam” may eventually become politically easier to accept in Europe than Chinese imports as Brussels increases scrutiny of Chinese EV subsidies and industrial overcapacity.
Although VinFast has benefited from strong political backing, tax incentives, infrastructure support, and preferential treatment inside Vietnam’s state-guided economy, the company remains formally private and is not perceived in Europe as part of the same vast state-driven industrial system that helped propel many Chinese EV giants.
Europe remains brutally competitive.
Unlike in Vietnam, VinFast enters a market where charging infrastructure already exists, dealer networks are mature, and consumers have dozens of established EV options.
The company’s biggest weakness is not manufacturing scale, but trust. European buyers worry about resale values, software support, servicing, spare parts availability, and whether the company itself will still maintain a significant European presence a decade from now.
Early registration figures remain tiny compared with established brands and Chinese rivals. VinFast has therefore increasingly shifted from direct online sales toward traditional dealership partnerships and independent aftersales networks.
Still, after visiting the vast industrial ecosystem in Hải Phòng, one thing becomes clear: VinFast is not a paper startup.
The factories are real. The industrial ambition is real. The question is whether Vietnam’s emerging automotive champion can transform that industrial capability into a sustainable global brand before the brutal economics of the EV industry catch up with it.
