The electric pickup segment is one of the hottest sectors in the auto market right now, with compelling vehicles like the Ford F-150 Lightning, Tesla Cybertruck, and Rivian R1T making headlines daily. VinFast is preparing its own entry, showing off its VF Wild EV truck concept at CES 2024 as a preview of a future production model.
The VF Wild’s shape takes inspiration from “the flowing motion of a superhero’s cape in the wind,” according to VinFast. However, the silhouette doesn’t remind us of Batman perched on top of a building watching Gotham City. The body has side-mounted cameras for improving the exterior’s aerodynamics.
The truck features a five-foot-long cargo bed with a power-folding mid-gate that extends the carrgo space into the cabin, much like the Silverado EV. With the rear seats down the VF Wild can carry loads up to eight feet long. The interior also has a panoramic glass roof.
Vinfast isn’t offering any details about the payload or max towing capacity. There’s also no info about the electric powertrain or the battery pack. But we do know the VF Wild concept is 209 inches long and 79 inches wide, putting it in the midsize truck category. For comparison, a Ford Ranger is 210.6 inches long and 75.5 inches wide, and a Toyota Tacoma is 213 inches by 76.9 inches.
“This is not just a new product in our offering – it showcases our aspiration to venture into the fast-paced and thriving electric pickup truck market,” said Tran Mai Hoa, Deputy CEO of Sales and Marketing at VinFast. The company didn’t offer any details about when a production version of the VF Wild would be on the market.
It’s not clear whether VinFast actually plans to sell the production VF Wild in America right now. If the truck were greenlit for the US, it would presumably be built at the company’s $4 billion factory that is currently under construction in Chatham County, North Carolina. This would allow the Vietnamese automaker to get around the “chicken tax” that places a 25 percent tariff on imported light trucks, allowing the production-spec VF Wild to be priced competitively against other midsize trucks.
