The first thing I do when I sit in the new VinFast VF8 City Edition is attempt to lower my seat. I apply a bit of downward pressure on the lever and the plastic covering comes off in my hand. “Ah, crap,” I think as I snap it back on. “I broke the car.”
Then the car begins to chime. Loudly. It seems that all the automated driving assistance features are kaput and need servicing. Forward collision warning? Service Required. Blind-spot monitoring? Service Required. Rear cross traffic alert, traffic sign recognition, lane keeping assist? Service All, Y’all.
I haven’t even left the parking lot yet.
[Full Disclosure: VinFast flew me out to a nice hotel, fed me, provided me with the car to drive, and this is their first major American press event. They’re new here.]
VinFast is a Vietnamese car company intent on bringing its electric SUVs to North America as soon as humanly possible. The company started building ICE vehicles in 2017, pivoted to EVs in 2021, had a drivable prototype in 2022 and now here I am in a production, all-electric VF8 City Edition. No wonder this shit doesn’t work.
Okay, that might be a bit of hyperbole. The VF8 works in that it will move you from point A to point B. It’s what happens during that time that’s a problem. If ever there was a company that needs to slow down and stop breaking things, it’s this one.
VinFast is calling this VF8 the City Edition since it has less range but quicker charging times than the standard model. You know, just what city folk need.
The 82 kWh battery stores enough juice for 207 miles of range in Eco trim, or 191 miles in Plus trim. Both trims can charge at a peak rate of around 160 kW, enough to go from a state of charge of 10 to 70 percent in about 24 minutes. That’s not a bad charging time, but the Kia EV6 can charge at a peak of 235 kW or so, going from 10 to 80 percent in about 18 minutes.
Let’s talk a bit more about this battery since VinFast was nice enough to provide some pretty detailed specs on it. VinFast uses lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA) cells, 1,175 of them, and these are the same types of cylindrical cells that Tesla uses. VinFast’s cells are made by Samsung.
A brand new car, from a basically brand new car company, from a country that’s relatively new to making cars and is selling them for the first time ever in the United States. Any way you look at this, it’s a big deal, and it all raises justified questions about whether this effort is legitimate or not.
But look: those are problems that you would deal with if you actually spent money on the car, which I am telling you, in no uncertain terms, not to do. At least not now.
After I show a VinFast representative the error codes, I get a new car. I’m joking with the rep like, “Ha ha ha can you believe all those error codes that never happens so weird ha ha ha!” But all I can think is, “Oh, this has definitely happened before.”
Sliding behind the wheel I take note of the vegan leather—that’s automaker speak for “we don’t want to spend the money on leather so we’ll use plastic but spin the crap out of it.” It looks like the real thing but even on this low-mile vehicle, I notice creasing and wear. There are some soft-touch materials, but it’s outdone by some cheap-looking and feeling plastics.
I’m fine with skimping on interior materials in a budget car, but this has an MSRP of $50,200 including $1,200 for destination. This interior is giving me $16,000 Nissan Versa vibes. Maybe it will drive okay. (Spoiler alert: It doesn’t.)
The push-button transmission is a little too Honda CR-V for my taste, but I have no choice except to smack that plastic D button and make my way out of the parking lot. Engaging the available sport mode on my Plus trim makes for quick acceleration– 5.5 seconds to 62 miles per hour – and an almost twitchy throttle response. It’s good. I dig it.
The VF 8 Eco is AWD with dual motors and makes 348 hp/368 pound-feet of torque from a pair of 150 kW motors. Those same 150 kW motors make 402 hp/457 pound-feet of torque in the VF 8 Plus version, which is their full capacity, suggesting that the Eco’s power is being throttled electronically. The VF 8 Eco starts at $49,000 and the Plus starts at $56,000 so all you car hackers out there should start thinking about how to unlock the extra power for those Eco cars to make a nice bit of aftermarket money someday.
The highway driving assist tracks straight, using the forward-facing camera and radar to keep the car from killing me and the others around me. I can take my hands off the wheel and sometimes I’ll get a warning to not be dumb, but it mostly lets me do what I want.
The drive route takes me to a twisty road. My speed is stymied by a large truck in front of me, but I can get going enough to tell that this thing has plenty of body roll and the suspension tuned to be pretty gosh-darn soft. Over rough pavement, the NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness) reaches a timbre that makes my ears throb, but I’m a bit congested too. The brake pedal is a floppy mess for the first half inch of travel and when it actually engages I have no idea how much pressure the calipers are actually putting on the discs. Every time I need to stop feels like a crap shoot. “Maybe this amount will stop the vehicle? Nope, too much? I can’t tell.” I’ve driven plenty of EVs and this is by far the weirdest braking experience I’ve ever had.
But honestly, it’s not the worst overall experience I’ve ever had. The steering is pretty quick and accurate and the wheel feels great in my hands. Visibility is good and I like the high brake regen setting, although I wish it would bring me to a complete stop instead of just creeping at 5 miles per hour or so.
It’s just that the car isn’t really done yet. A bit of stiffness in the springs would do wonders, as would some chassis tuning to mitigate the annoying NVH. Scrap the brakes and start over and add the option of one-pedal driving. Just a few tweaks could greatly improve the ride quality and overall driving experience.
Electronics, however, might be a whole other Oprah. Eventually, my second car bricks all its ADAS features just like the first car I got into. The only way I can get the native navigation system to work in my tester is to hotspot the system off of my drive partner’s phone. I repeat, I have to give the car internet to use the built-in navigation system.
A VinFast rep says that won’t happen to folks who buy or lease the car, but I can get into any other vehicle as a journalist and the navigation system works, so what up?
[Editor’s Note: It may be worth mentioning that if these electronics actually worked, they’d be pretty competitive because VinFast seems to offer a pretty full spectrum of stuff. The ADAS system is supposed to include Level 2 semi-automated driving, which they classify as Traffic Jam Assist (lower speed) and Highway Assist (higher speed). This comes with all the expected stuff like adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assistance and traffic sign recognition, and they say it has fully-automated parking assist and “remote parking,” though I’m not entirely sure what they mean by that.
They also mention a very Tesla-sounding Smart Summon mode – do they mean the driverless, in-parking-lot, giant RC car-style concept where it can be raining and the car drives up to you from a parking lot, so you stay dry and toasty? Maybe! Also Tesla-like are features like Pet Mode and Camp Mode, which must maintain the internal temperature for long periods when the car is otherwise off. They’re ambitious with how fully featured this is, I’ll give them that.
There’s also optional features listed like a web browser and online games (offline games are standard, it seems), and phone mirroring systems (think Car Play, Android Auto) are also options, which is one up on Tesla.
VinFast has also integrated what3words navigation system into the car, which is a system that lets you navigate to – as they say, “any 10 foot by 10 foot spot on the planet,” which is, notably, a metric that includes my nice warm lap, by “just inputting three simple words that represent the destination.”
They also list an option that has both a question mark and an asterisk (“Ecommerce (food order, etc)?*”) so I don’t know what to make of that. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a question mark on a car spec sheet before. – JT]
My colleagues don’t fare much better. One person I talk to says his tester constantly pulls to the right. Another journalist tells me his car rolled backward on a hill. One guy said the car never prompted him to put his hands on the wheel while testing the Highway Assist.
Other folks complain about fussy turn signals and HVAC systems that blow either freezing or sweltering, nothing in between. The driving experience is one thing, but cars that are allegedly ready for consumers should not have these quality control issues.
[Editor’s Note: Maybe it’s my perpetual and tragic love for the underdog, but I do feel compelled to point out at least two positives about the VF 8 that I noticed. First, they actually bothered to give it a front trunk, which a number of its competitors, mostly from Germany for some reason, couldn’t be bothered to do:
At 2.7 cubic feet of space, it’s about the same size as a Tesla Model 3 frunk, roughly. I’m just happy they bothered to carve out the space that is rightfully yours.
Also, their color selection looks pretty good, and includes a bunch of actual colors and not the usual grim monochrome grayscale palette we’ve been force-fed by so many carmakers:
Red, orange, green, blue! Actual colors! That’s worth applauding. The design overall, a Pininfarina design, even, isn’t bad, really, but it is kind of anonymous. The VF 8 looks like most modern SUVs or crossovers, which is probably just fine for most buyers, but I’d have liked to see a few more risks taken. – JT]
I’ll give VinFast props for its warranty, though. If you plunk down money for this thing, which you absolutely shouldn’t do for at least another year, you’ll get a 10-year/125,000-mile warranty on the car and a 10-year/unlimited-mile warranty on the battery.
Oh right, the battery. Early on VinFast was planning on leasing the battery to consumers but found the financials to be too difficult to manage. However, a representative said the company is still open to battery leasing should the market demand it.
The only way to get your hands on a VinFast VF8 City Edition is to lease one. Monthly pricing starts at $414 per month, a competitive number to be sure. However, if you’re even remotely considering leasing a VF8, I urge you to reread this article and go lease a Chevy Bolt EUV for a few bucks more.
Wait for a year or so and then revisit the VinFast. I certainly plan to. This company just needs time to get it right.
So remember that article a few days ago about how there are no bad cars for sale any more? None that will constantly disintegrate and totally fail to do what they should?
We stand corrected! Oh Vinfast…
Now admit the 1st gen Dakota was a decent truck 😛
I was about to say!
Define “bad”.
I mean, its not like ALL the wheels fell off. It didn’t catch fire. It didn’t drive itself through a farmers market. The stereo didn’t randomly blast screechy, distorted communist manifestos. The seat springs didn’t sprong through the seat impaling the driver. The windows didn’t spontaneously shatter.
It could have been worse.
Did you buy my Lada after I dumped it ?
So they named it the “VF8 City Edition”, eh? Is it possible that no one at VinFast has ever watched South Park?
Welcome to City Wok can I take your order please
Look to be fair RE the HVAC in Vietnam, they only need one setting ice. So be thankful that it blows warm at all! Literally every tourist van I travelled in, in Thailand and Indonesia did not have a warm setting on the HVAC controls.
It would be great if they’d push this to a cheap entry level SUV, scrap the ADAS stuff that doesn’t work, and sell it at a triply competitive price. Effectively an electric dodge journey. There’s a genuine market for it. Packaging what works ok on this vehicle and quit trying to refine what they aren’t ready to sell would make this descent looking car a hit. Sell it cheap and they’ll sell fast!
Of course, that’ll set a bargain basement precedent for this new company in the US (and manufacturing nation) which may be hard to shake for a few decades.
Interesting that the opinion here was the brakes sucked and the steering was decent, where other places said the exact opposite. Are these cars that inconsistent?
From what Emme had to say about her fellow journalists’ note-sharing reports, it sounds like they are very much that inconsistent.
I’m not sure what to think of Vinfast.I kind of want want them to do well but cant get excited about it given they’re producing moderately expensive EUVs with sad generic shapes. The colors are great though,so well done there
So… What cells is this vehicle using? 82 kw-hr with 1175 cells gives a per cell power of about 70W-hr, for an NCA cell that’s about 19.4 A-hr. This is about half that of the 46mm diameter cells that Tesla uses for certain model Y’s, but a bit more than double the 2170s from other model 3 and Y’s. Is it really 11750 cells (typo’ed a zero), which would make them slightly weak 18650’s?
Good detective work. If we assume ‘slightly weak’ as ‘under stressed’ this sounds about right for a company that have a long warranty
If I may channel my grandfather in a seance for a moment: “I did not watch my buddies die face down in the muck so that these [expletive deleted] can sell junk on American soil!”
Back to the living: I’m not big on conglomerates of totally unrelated enterprises just deciding to throw their hat in the automotive ring. It’s like when Dunkin Donuts sold chicken salad.
Then again I heard Vingroup is a joint venture of Matsumura Fishworks and Tamaribuchi Heavy Manufacturing Concern.
What a brave corporate logo!
“…a joint venture of Matsumura Fishworks and Tamaribuchi Heavy Manufacturing Concern.
What a brave corporate logo!”
Upvote for classical reference.
VinSparkle
Back in the day at GM, there was a LOT of effort put into making “press cars” for “ride and drives” look and run good. So either these folks didn’t get that message or the ones that dealers sell are even worse….
GM’s carefully massaged press cars often still had loud clunking noises from the front end, and problems starting with a cold engine, it very well could be Vinfast is doing the same thing, and this really is the best they can come up with
The student has become the master… stolen from a lighting site:
The Jalopnik:
Then there’s Emme Hall, whose VF8 wailed that every aspect of its ADAS suite was dead or dying the moment she sat in her tester. VinFast responded by giving her a different one. Guess how that went? As Hall explained for The Autopian:
I think it’s pretty cool that there’s some mutual acknowledgemente between Jalopnik and The Autopian (we’ve seen lots of links to old content originally posted in Jalopnik, which directs web traffic to them, so I think that’s how the founding Autopians feel too), and I’d rather believe there’s no hard feelings from either side – although it makes for some good jokes, and that’s fine too; I don’t think the German Lighting Website really minds the nickname.
100%
This was just one of the first times I saw TheAutopian quoted as a primary source over on that side, while articles here have referenced the authors previous works over there for a while.
They grow up so fast….
Emme Hall is here? My day just got a little better. Been a fan for years. Great article. We all love an underdog but facts are facts. This how to tell the truth without being a horse’s patoot.
A couple things, one, a VinFast dealer just popped up in my neck of the woods in an old Player’s Cardroom. Appropriate, seeing as buying seems to be sort of a gamble at this point. (Ha ha) And also, mobile browsing and scrolling on this site is just as if not more broken than it was at herblopnik. Please please PLEEEEEEASE fix the mobile scrolling experience.
I’ve never had any issues scrolling using chrome on my Android… Definitely can’t say that about the old lighting site
Never had an issue on my iPhone.
Having no issues here with browsing on mobile. I’m using Firefox on Android, for what it’s worth.
I’ve noticed that big lettering across the back seems to be a current design trend. Everyone needs to know that you drive a P I L OT, or a P A T H F I N D E R, or a G R A N D W A G O N E E R.
My understanding is that it costs more to have the letters as separate badge pieces, so having it spaced out gives a higher-end vibe. I don’t know if anyone besides auto designers and super nerds (yours truly) knows about the cost difference of perceives the upscaleness of the badging anyway, so maybe it’s just the designers feeding off their own hype
I’m not a fan of that trend. I think the Lexus L badge would look way more classy than L E X U S across the trunk of the current RX.
To me it’s a throwback to the ’90s. Models or makes like L E G E N D or I N F I N I T I spelled across the trunk itself or a heckblende, all the way down to a C A M R Y, A L T I M A, or L E G A C Y.
On my ferry commute across the San Francisco bay, I spotted a VinFast RoRo ship. I wish a snapped a photo. Who the hell is gonna buy a ship load at these prices?
They had two cars in the Pine st dealership all wrapped up, then they disappeared. It’s been empty for a month at least. I keep looking when I go by but it looks like they left to me.
These things are over $100,000 in Canada
I hate say this but the amount of positive Editor’s Notes after negative observations by the author feels a little like doing damage control for a sponsor or advertiser. I know it’s not but it just seems a little excessive and verbose for ENs. Just let them do the review and state how badly it sucks. This will save readers from making the mistake of wasting precious cash or being stranded with a car full of kids on a hot summer’s day. I say this a former Alfa owner that was around when they were banished, due to bad build quality.
Yeah, I agree. Should have let the First Drive article stand on its own, then milk content with a second one from the editor about, “Reasons Why You Should Keep Looking at the VF* (just, not yet)”.
Please forgive the numerous omitted words. It would be nice to be able to edit my comment.
You can. [Edit: See?]
I guess they initially told Emme “you can write honest reviews here, it’s not paid content”, but only because they didn’t want her to know that was pure BS. I mean we all have/had our gripes with the old lighting site, but I don’t remember seeing there this kind of blatant backtracking to appease the sponsor.
It’s quite eye-opening, and frankly disappointing..
Also agree. Either save the extended Editor’s Notes for a their own article or give the author notes on what additional content the editor feels they should cover. These break up the flow of the article.
All those editor’s notes are just paraphrasing the spec sheet. Maybe they just need to add a specs section to a review instead of JT just trying to chime in every other paragraph with 5 paragraphs and a couple of pictures.
I see this and all I can think about is ‘You just got killed by a daewoo lanos mother f***er!’
Society is stupid enough to definitely fall for a vinfast ponzi scheme. I could see them letting individuals set up franchises if they just buy 5 cars at 50%, then letting those franchises franchise. Just like Daewoo, but working that side hustle/self employed angle
I too enjoy schemes based on a soy based, mildly sweet sauce.
Sigh. I knew I should have gotten the phone with the bigger keyboard. Isn’t there supposed to be an edit button in this joint now?
Should be at the bottom right of a comment. I gotchu. 🙂
The VinFast plant used to be a Daewoo facility, so you’re not far off.
This being their first public quality assessment, perhaps they should change the name of the company to DeadLast 😉
This vehicle came to existence quickly.. suspiciously quickly…now we know why.
I posted pictures of wrapped cars at the dealership on Pine St. in SF on Oppo, but they took the cars away after a couple days and they have not returned. Feels like they are pulling out.
I saw the VinFast RoRo ship in the bay on Tuesday…maybe they rolled them back on!!
It’s a cheap looking setup where a car consignment place was before covid. I wouldn’t feel great spending that much cash in that crap dealership.
They literally had a pop up tent on 4th street in Berkeley. Imagine leasing a car in the same manner as buying Girl scout cookies!
There is a giant Mitsubishi Mirage, but it’s electric sized hole in the US market. All they had to was make the cheapest running and driving car they could get past safety regulations. Then add a touch screen. There’s even a blueprint from all those Chinese billionaire pet project brands in Australia. Instead, they chase the dragon of the Tesla stock price. Vinfast, it’s okay to be Kia for awhile. You got to compact before you midsize.
I have to admit, this is not an encouraging report, considering they are building the factory less than 20 miles from my house. Both the county and the state have given a lot of support to this company. I hope they can improve things quickly.
Ouch, I agree. As you say, they’ve broken ground on a manufacturing plant SW of Raleigh, and the amount of tax breaks and (seeming) damage to the bucolic area (re-routing existing and building new roads, new highway interchanges, clear-cutting of forest) is sickening. If it were a well-known successful endeavor, it might make some sense. But not when the cars seem this half-baked. Hope it’s not a tax-payer sponsored boondoggle.
Don’t worry, I grew up in a state that gave a factory to a major automaker, you can always just repurpose it as a Sony CRT TV factory
Hey on the plus side, if the company ceases to exist a year into your lease, maybe you just get to keep it!
I doubt it will be useful for more than a month or so beyond, though…
All I think of when I hear Vinfast is Sheldon saying “dinfast” mocking Leonard for having dinner/breakfast with Priya…, and this article makes me think if I ever see one on the road it would be appropriate to do the eye roll sideways comment…”dinfast”.
Sounds like if Daewoo kept going and started trying to make upscale EVs.
Hold on a minute. 50k?! The Ioniq 5 is faster charging, far better to drive, has a longer range, and has a far lower chance of leaving you stranded (not zero, but at least it can be fixed at a dealership). Why does this thing exist?
This is giving me Daewoo vibes – I think for the first year or so of selling the Matiz in the UK, they offered 3 years of free servicing, an insanely generous warranty on a car that was, to put it politely, absolute garbage. As a result, they were basically paying people to stop driving them because it was cheaper than honoring the service commitment – they were giving away new cars because they couldn’t repair the ones they had already sold, and their service centers were overwhelmed.
Wow same thought same time, sounds like Daewoo! lol.
This was a Daewoo plant before GM took over Daewoo. GM sold it to VinFast. Only the employees and work ethic remained the same.
Except that Daewoos were dirt cheap rather than $50K