2023 VinFast VF8 Proves Constructing Automobiles Is Onerous

If you’re a powerful international conglomerate that wants to sell cars in the U.S., the easiest approach is to buy a car company that already does that. Think Tata with Jaguar and Land Rover, or Geely with Volvo, or whoever it is that controls Lotus these days with them. It’s much more difficult, and smacks of a certain hubris, to forgo all incumbent brand awareness and institutional knowledge and simply start building cars. But if any country loves blithe confidence it’s America, so let’s give a warm welcome to the VinFast VF8, the latest answer to the question, “How hard can it be to build a car?”

VinFast—which at least 30 percent of the U.S. population will initially hear as “SlimFast”—is part of Vingroup Joint Stock Company, otherwise known as Vingroup, a sprawling Vietnamese company with interests in hospitality, real estate, education, and plenty more. If you want to know what a given Vingroup company does, the name is usually a clue—Vinhomes, VinUniversity, VinBigData. (We shudder to ask what VinBrain does but can probably guess.) The VF8, the first model to make it to the U.S., is a two-row, all-wheel-drive crossover—junior to the three-row VF9, but larger than the VF7. If that naming convention sounds so painfully obvious that it doesn’t bear explaining, somebody please tell Infiniti to crib some notes.

The VF8, like all other upcoming models, is electric. The base, 349-hp dual-motor VF8 Eco is priced from $47,200 with an 87.7-kWh battery and an EPA-estimated range of 264 miles. The ritzier Plus goes for $53,000 and gets 402 horsepower. We drove the $54,200 Plus City Edition, a trim specific to the first 999 units to arrive to the U.S. and is the same as the Plus but only available via lease in California starting at $528 a month for three years and after a $5090 down payment. To make things confusing, the initial run of City Editions are equipped with a Samsung-sourced 82.0-kWh battery that the EPA says should provide 207 miles of range for the Eco and 191 miles for the Plus. After the first 999 VF8s, VinFast will make the switch to a 87.7-kWh CATL pack that will up the range to an EPA estimated 264 miles for the Eco and 243 for the Plus, but those numbers may understate the actual range. We’ll get to that.

The VF8’s styling is textbook “I told AI to design an electric crossover,” despite coming from Pininfarina. Aesthetically, the first thing most people notice is that the rear end of the car sits lower than the front, a subtle Carolina Squat that suggests there’s a half-pallet of river rocks in the cargo area. Cops will probably pull over perplexed VF8 drivers and demand to know where the contraband is stashed. “How many kilos of booger sugar you got behind those rear trim panels, son?”

And the VinFast driver could invite a look, no pry tools necessary, since you can see right down to the rear fender wells where the outboard seatbelts pass through the lower trim. That’s because the hole for the belts is probably three times as big as it needs to be, which is one reason that rough roads make it sound like you’re driving inside a tom drum—the body structure is right there, with no insulation. Details like that make you wonder if VinFast realized it was allowed to look at other cars before building its own.

Despite the “Kia EV6 by way of the Uncanny Valley” vibe of the overall presentation, the VF8 does do some things well. Its highway-assist system does a great job keeping the car centered in a lane, such that you’re not constantly fighting the wheel to correct it (as in, say, a Lucid). At the test track, the Plus City Edition generated respectable numbers, hitting 60 mph in 5.0 seconds and covering the quarter-mile in 13.9 seconds at 98 mph. And on our 75-mph highway range test, the City Edition far surpassed its EPA rating, offering 210 miles of range. Which suggests, charmingly, that VinFast is still too green to know how to game its EPA numbers like other EV makers. And the VinFast warranty, too, includes some impressive figures: 10 years or 125,000 miles, bumper to bumper.

But producing decent numbers is the easy part. Maybe 95 percent of car-building concerns hitting easily quantifiable benchmarks. But that other 5 percent, the black magic of ride and handling, interior quality, brake feel—the more subjective stuff—is what defines great cars. It’s exceedingly difficult for new companies to get all of that right. As VinFast demonstrates.

In the VF8’s logbook, one driver compared the sound of the windshield-wiper motor to that of a 1979 Jeep CJ-7’s. We speculated on the odd whirring noises that periodically emanate from behind the dash—is someone firing up an electric leaf blower in there? The steering has a ton of friction on-center, and the power-steering motor is cheap enough that you can feel the steps in its windings if you slowly turn the wheel at rest. The suspension is way underdamped, delivering a bounce-house ride. Clues abound that this car was rushed to the U.S.—when the climate control boots up, the temperature reads in centigrade and then flickers over to Fahrenheit, and the head-up display settings permanently depict a hypothetical left-hand turn onto Nguyen Chi Thanh Street in Hanoi.

Even in areas where VinFast did a solid job, the company tends to undermine itself. For instance, that highway-assist system—and every other nanny, including a speed-limit tattletale—is activated by default each time the car is turned on, and all together they bring with them a never-ending onslaught of chirpy electronic recriminations no matter how carefully you drive. You have to deactivate those systems via the 15.6-inch touchscreen, which is also used to assign the left-hand steering-wheel toggle switch to different functions, such as adjusting the outside mirrors or moving the steering column. Precisely no one prefers this setup to actual dedicated physical controls, but we understand VinFast had to keep an eye on the price. On that subject, see also: the VF8’s “vegan leather” a.k.a. vinyl, non-branded sound system that constantly emits white noise, and lack of a spare tire. A spare can be added through the after-sales department.

But when you’re an unknown, price assumes outsize importance. Back in the 1980s, nobody bought the Hyundai Excel because it was better than a Toyota Corolla, but it sold nonetheless. Which begs the question, “What would this car have to cost to convince would-be buyers to take a chance on a complete unknown with immediately obvious flaws?” We’re not sure what the answer to that is, other than a lot less than $55,190, which was the number attached to our test car.

Senior Editor

Ezra Dyer is a Car and Driver senior editor and columnist. He’s now based in North Carolina but still remembers how to turn right. He owns a 2009 GEM e4 and once drove 206 mph. Those facts are mutually exclusive.