I’ve started to see VinFast EVs on the road in New York, and I have to explain to anyone I’m with why my head just snapped to look at what appears to be a normal crossover. “It’s a Vietnamese car!” I exclaim. This doesn’t seem to impress my friends or family. The idea that a car could be built in China, Vietnam, Canada, Slovakia, or wherever is no longer novel. Oh well, it’s impressive to me.
The era of local automotive manufacturers was supposed to be over, or at least it would appear that way to a regular reader of The Morning Dump. Global automakers seemingly have won, and it’s way more likely for a local brand to be absorbed into a bigger one than it is for a new one to be started. VinFast is still making it work, though it seems to be the victim of terrible timing. How is it still going?
Mercedes-Benz Group is one of those companies that’s now a mixture of brands, and while it continues to sell electric cars, the company’s CEO would very much like the European Union to follow the example of the United States and alter its combustion ban in order to remain competitive.
This is one of the big underlying tensions for traditional automakers. On the one hand, no one is better positioned to take advantage of intermediate shifts back towards traditional vehicles. On the other hand, they’re all potentially way too far behind to win a future that’s dominated by Software Defined Vehicles. This is extremely clear when you look at GM, which is trying to lure back Cruise employees.
VinFast Pivots Back Towards Asia
There’s a VinFast dealer on Long Island now, which isn’t the worst place for one to be. If you want a new license to drive an Uber in the city, your only easy path forward is to get an electric car. It’s also possible that, given how cheap they are, someone is willing to take a gamble on the Vietnamese automaker.
If you weren’t aware, VinFast is the project of Pham Nhat Vuong and VinGroup. This is a major company in Vietnam that deals in theme parks, retail, batteries, and real estate. What would it like to be? Everything you love… about cars. As a carmaker, the company has found some success in Vietnam, where it has both a local brand advantage and a production base. Seeing the huge moves by Tesla, Vuong put over $10 billion of the company’s riches into developing an electric car to sell locally and in Western markets
It didn’t go well. Emme Hall covered the launch of the VF8 City Edition for us, and the car stopped working multiple times. The car was recalled after some issues, and VinFast even offered to pay customers for the times its vehicles broke. Not a great start. Even if VinFast had launched a perfect car, I’m not sure it could have competed. The company dove headfirst into the ultra-competitive, oversaturated two-row SUV market. Being built in Vietnam may have offered a price advantage, in theory, but Tesla went on a price cutting spree and lowered prices across the board. Then Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, further lowering the cost of cars from Tesla and other competitive automakers.
Oh, did I mention tariffs? Yeah, those happened as well.
Couple all of that with a slowdown in the EV market, and the United States was maybe not the best place to launch. VinFast seems to agree, having delayed its North Carolina plant and, according to this Bloomberg report, the company is starting a pivot to developing EV markets like India and Southeast Asia.
The new target markets are “late bloomers” in terms of EV sales “but hold tremendous potential and are currently entering a vibrant phase of growth,” the company said.
The expansion plans follow VinFast’s push to establish itself in North America and Europe. But the effort was marred by initial bad reviews of its cars and a recall over malfunctioning software. Of the company’s 97,399 global deliveries in 2024, about 90% were in Vietnam. Last year it delayed a planned North Carolina EV factory until 2028.
The southern half of Asia, however, is home to rapidly growing economies with well over 2 billion consumers. Rates of car ownership are lower than in the West and there are fewer established domestic brands. But it’s less affluent, meaning demand likely will be driven by smaller cars with slimmer profit margins.
“Like many other companies, VinFast makes short-term adjustments to its business plans in response to changing circumstances,” the company said in a statement.
As the report notes, Vuong can essentially afford to bankroll VinFast’s EV plans into perpetuity, assuming Vietnam’s economy stays stable. In that way, it’s a lot like other automakers, using its main business to support a long-term EV rollout.
The EU Needs A ‘Reality Check’ On Combustion Ban
My longstanding contention has been that electric cars are inevitable, but that the timeline for their rollout is going to be longer than the early, rosier projections. Does that mean I think governments shouldn’t push for more EVs? I think they have their advantages, and very little change happens in this world without a little push.
Mercedes CEO/very tall person Ola Kallenius thinks that the little push from the European Union is more like a shove straight into the ground.
Per Reuters:
“We need a reality check. Otherwise we are heading at full speed against a wall,” Mercedes CEO Ola Kaellenius told the Handelsblatt business daily of the 2035 goal, adding that Europe’s car market could “collapse” if it goes ahead.
Kaellenius argued that consumers would simply hurry to buy cars with petrol or diesel engines ahead of the ban.
Currently serving as head of the European auto lobby ACEA, the German auto boss has instead called for tax incentives and cheap power prices at charging stations to encourage the switch to electric cars.
“Of course we have to decarbonise, but it has to be done in a technology-neutral way. We must not lose sight of our economy,” Kaellenius said.
Prior to the November election, even the Biden White House was looking for ways to slow-roll its own stricter requirements. The best way to do this, in my humble opinion, is to set a high bar and then to build a couple of steps to help the industry get over it. That appears to be what Kallenius is asking for, and I’m guessing he’ll get that and a lowering of the bar.
Tesla And Nio Lead In ‘Software Defined Vehicles’
It is not enough for car companies to sell good cars. They have to have a vision for the future that’s more than just selling good cars. For a while, it was self-driving cars. Every car was going to be a self-driving car. That hasn’t gone away, but it was happening too slowly for investors. What about car subscription services? That was going to be a great future… until it wasn’t. As mentioned above, there was a dream of everyone swapping their cars for high-margin (hopefully) electric vehicles.
The latest hot item is the “Software-defined vehicle.” This is a car whose biggest appeal is not driving experience, but how well the car distracts you from driving by catering to your every need. To make that work, S&P Global Mobility thinks SDVs need the ability to update remotely and eventually, utilize a fully unified OS with an Ethernet backbone. You can see all this in the chart below:
Gone are the days of cars being built with a hundred various software platforms from disparate suppliers that need 15 miles of wire and a trillion lines of code to work together. How close or how far are we from that?
According to Automotive News, it depends a lot on who is making the car:
“Tesla invented the SDV a while ago,” said Philippe Houchois, an analyst at Jefferies.
Trailing Tesla are China startups Nio and Xpeng as well as U.S. EV makers Rivian and Lucid, according to Gartner’s 2024 Digital Automaker Index, which reflects progress in hardware, firmware update capabilities, rollouts of over-the-air updates, and use of AI in vehicle software.
Tesla’s rivals are about 70 percent to having SDVs because of “limitations in architecture, computing power and the number of AI use cases,” Pacheco said.
Legacy automakers including JLR, Mazda and Toyota fall below the 10 percent threshold in Pacheco’s assessment. Their systems use “old-school software,” he said.
This goes a long way to explain why Volkswagen decided to invest in Rivian, hoping to get closer to being competitive.
GM Would Maybe Like Some Of Those Cruise Employees Back
According to its own filings, General Motors spent something like $10 billion on its robotaxi firm Cruise before safety issues forced it to pull the plug. The automaker said it would incorporate the team and technology into future products, but it sounds like that didn’t exactly happen, with Bloomberg reporting that the automaker is reportedly looking to convince some older Cruise employees to come back. From Bloomberg:
The plan was detailed in an employee meeting on Aug. 6 by Sterling Anderson, the former Tesla Inc. Autopilot chief who joined GM earlier this year, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the meeting was private. Anderson said he sees autonomy as the future and that GM will add more talent, including trying to bring back some Cruise workers and hire new staff for the automaker’s Mountain View, California, office and other locations, the people said.
GM told Bloomberg that it has been running human-driven vehicles on public roads gathering data for the development of self-driving technology.
“We’re accelerating the development of autonomous driving technology capable of operating without active human oversight,” spokeswoman Chaiti Sen said in a statement. The lidar-equipped fleet is logging data to “build simulation models that will guide development.”
SuperCruise is the best hands-free driving system I regularly use, but it’s still far from SAE Level 5 autonomous driving.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I finally saw Alex Ross Perry’s truly weird and spectacular Pavements. How to describe it? It’s both a film about the band and a film about films about bands. There’s a real/fake Pavement museum (I went!), a real/fake Pavement biopic starring Joe Keery from Stranger Things as Stephen Malkmus, a real/fake behind-the-scenes making of the biopic, and a real/fake musical that they actually performed (I didn’t get to go see it and will forever be sad about this). Oh, and there’s a real-real behind-the-scenes documentary of the band’s last show. These are all expertly woven together, and I think if you’ve never heard of the band the movie will be particularly hilarious. If you’re a huge fan, like myself, it’s also quite enjoyable, though more so on second viewing. If you’re a moderate fan of the band, it might not work.
My favorite part of the film is by far the musical. The line on Pavement’s slacker rock was that the strange, impenetrable lyrics were mostly nonsense to anyone who isn’t Malkmus himself. That’s a part of the mystique, though what the jukebox musical version displays is the emotional backbone and wonderful storytelling buried under the too-cool-to-be-good aura. Here’s the finale, including the leads from both the Alanis Morissette and the Green Day musical.
How is this possible? How does it work? Does anyone have a full copy of the musical they can send me?
The Big Question
Where does your vehicle fall on the SDV chart?
Top photo: VinFast
I wish we could see the full list of most software defined vehicle brands because I’m pretty sure it is the exact inverse of car brands I’m most likely to buy.
Having spent a few weeks in Europe, these cities and towns may be about the best EV use case known to man. Once again, it comes down to charging infrastructure. Millions of street parked cars/motorcycles/scooters all needing electric power, sometimes in a location built in the middle ages. How do we power them all? Can a battery pack for a scooter/motorcycle be carried into a home or workplace for charging? How many car chargers are needed and where? The sole advantage of gasoline/diesel is the abiltiy to add hundreds of miles of range in under 5 minutes – ANYWHERE.
Two of our vehicles are living in the Dark Ages of SDV. My 2014 Camry Hybrid has a lot more software running, TBH I despise the factory infotainment, am ambivalent about the rest.
I totally get their desire to move to no tailpipe vehicles, Paris for example has gotten so much cleaner with the restrictions on cars in the city but you’re absolutely right, I have no idea how they plan on charging all these cars.
Yes, I realize few in Europe drive what we do here in the States. But even sitting, they still need charging access at some frequency.
Also, from a US centric perspective, we should probably stop closing power plants without a plan to replace the entire capacity. Our generating capacity is growing barely enough to keep pace with the population, let alone the push to electrify everything (heating, ovens, lawn mowers, cars, etc), not to mention the damn AI data centers that are popping up everywhere
I was really impressed that Vienna has EV charging built into streetlights. I don’t know how much it costs or how they bill for it, but it’s a great idea for those who can’t charge at home.
Is there a level below zero? My vehicles fall into the “not applicable” category when it comes to such things as CAN bus and indeed software in general. I suppose the complete absence of attack surfaces does qualify as “basic cybersecurity” though.
You may be secure in case of EMD weapon attack. Look on the plus side!
I thought my original comment was looking on the plus side, even though I was asking for a level below zero. I’m a geologist, not a mathematician.
Damnit Jim!
I think Level -1 would be “does not respond to driver.” I bet a bunch of Autopian cars fall into that category!
Does a manual transmission count as level -1?
That, then. I’m not futzing around with a malaise carburetor but I basically have a state-of-the-art late-1990s car built in 2020.
your Adaptive Cruise control, lane keeping systems, and perhaps parking sensors, ABS and Traction control. But also on that non carb system much of them if not all are Drive by wire, so I sometimes question how much is being baby sat to make current drivers feel like better drivers than they are.
I guess my 2024 Mazda puts me at 10% or lower. The 2007 e93 and 1994 VF750 ain’t helping, and I’m not mad about it. My iphone wasn’t plugged in overnight but it updated itself anyway and I woke to an almost-dead battery. Grateful none of my vehicles try similar shenanigans!
Software defined “catering to my every need”, except that’s pretty much just driving and engagement with driving. I’ve walked away from more people who wanted to sleep with me than I’ve taken up and what I preferred to do in all of those instances was go out for a f’n drive. Hell, even in the middle of being with the ones I did take up, I would often think: this is what I waste so much energy and deal with so much BS to get? I should have went for a drive.
I have seen multiple Fisker Oceans in the Chicago area, but only one Vinfast.
So I guess my phone is Level 1 since Google Maps gets regular updates?
That’s all I need, thankyouverymuch.
I don’t fear the future, but I also refuse to partake in these subscription shenanigans.
To their credit, VinFast did actually develop and offer an EV for sale in the US. This is more than I can say for quite a few companies that had way more buzz.
They did, however, commit the cardinal sin of both sucking and being expensive. New entrants to the US market are allowed to suck at first (see the Korean marques), but they must be cheap to compensate. I expect they’ll be gone within the next two years and there will be a Cold Start on this website about the VF8 maybe 7 years from now
Makes me wonder if they finally dropped MSRPs in addition to the cheap lease deals they rolled out after the initial wave of bad press.
“distracts you from driving” What a great idea! Added bonus of possibility of glitchy or hacked interference with critical functions! Piss right off! EVs can and should be much simpler, cheaper, easier to live with, without smartphone lifespan limitations.
But then you wouldn’t have to spend $60K on a new one every 3 years! Hooray!
I saw a red VF8 like the one in the top photo when I was driving to Indiana the other day on the tollway, it had license plates and was in fact driving, maybe things are improving. They don’t look bad to me appearance wise at least.
A few months ago I saw a VinFast on the way to dropping my kid off at school and nearly broke my neck by swiveling it so fast. Later I looked it up and was amazed there was a dealer within 2 hours of where I live, in Lake Charles, LA of all places.
Seriously same idea here in Birmingham, I think they’re intentionally targeting MSAs that were underserved by the major EV makers. I hope it pays off, because right now they feel like Hardee’s up against McDonald’s and Burger King. It doesn’t matter if the quality is there if the showrooms and infrastructure suck.
Level 0. It’s not a hindrance in any way.
I wish Vinfast success.
If anyone’s old enough to recall Hyundai’s early export vehicles, such as the Pony & Excel: they were atrocious. We all know that Vinfast can fix their issues.
The world isn’t just “America”, there’s lots of market out there for Vinfast to build their brand.
The software level of my Super Beetle is having a sensor in the passenger seat when the seatbelt is not put on and having a dog jumping in the seat triggering the light on and off. Also the logic of that light is to trigger the “alert” when you are on a gear, not neutral. The only software there is the logic they used to make this switch work lol
That’s a Hardware Defined Vehicle, my friend. There’s no code. Only the cold, hard switching of electrons from physical contacts.
I’ve asked my viet friends their opinion on the Vinfast and was expecting the usual comments of it being overpriced or underbaked or rushed to market but nope, the response was “It’s a scam.”
I feel your pain trying to explain why a car is cool or unusual.
Me: See it’s cool because it looks normal right? But it’s a rare edition. See that badge? Yeah nobody thought they would actually bring it to market. They’ve been selling them in the UK for a while though…
Them: You missed your exit.
Thats why I miss so many exits!
The unoffical motto of /r/IdiotsInCars;
“A good driver sometimes misses their exit. A bad driver never does.”
Took me a second to run through a few scenarios and….yes.
I appreciate these companies. My vehicle should be hardware-defined. A software glitch or hack should not affect critical systems. A bad update shouldn’t, for example, impact my braking or cause unintended acceleration. The basic functions of the vehicle should work properly from the factory and should neither require updates nor receive them over cellular connection.
The ability to quickly update/patch leads to complacency. Look at videogames. In the days of cartridges and consoles with no internet connection, games had to ship complete with few bugs. Now we have day one patches, then other patches to fix the new bugs those patches introduce. We’ve already seen updates pushed out too soon leading to bricked vehicles.
Further, the infotainment should be partitioned off from critical vehicle functions. There’s too much at stake and there’s always the possibility that someone finds some novel combination of functions and button presses that crashes things. That should be contained to non-essential systems.
For rhis reason (too frequent OTA updates often causing glitches, though which were usually quickly patched), China required automakers to file their OTA updates with the government ahead of time, and limited their frequency to about once every 3 months. Additionally, those emergency fix patches now have to go through the recall process, punishing the company’s poorly tested software with bad publicity.
It was implemented this April/May, but before that some companies were pushing OTAs monthly or even biweekly.
I am not buying a car from a company with a name that sounds like a diet plan based on drinking wine. Need to shed stubborn belly fat? Try VINFast! It’s just Viet Wrong.
For the first 6-12 months of casually hearing about them in headlines, I really thought it was just a competitor to Carfax.
There’s a company called Give Me the VIN that is a sponsor of my local NPR station. It seems to be akin to Carvana, but I’m not in the seller’s market.
I’m still “shocked” they don’t have any diesel cars
With that level of foresight at the top, Mercedes is doomed.
China is clearly going to eat everyone’s lunch in the auto market, because everyone else is laying down tools. Protectionism won’t save anybody in the long run; people will see the videos of Chinese cars doing things other cars simply can’t and they will want them.
The vast numbers of BYDs & MGs in Europe would support the theory. And, as a bonus, many of them are good looking cars.
Agreed. Mercedes, and the German Auto industry in general, feels very similar to the US. Lets just keep building ICE to snag short term profit, stuff our head in the sand about making high quality, competitive EVs. There won’t be much to save in a few years once the Chinese brands get full access to all these markets.
Legacy automakers can erect protectionist trade barriers all they want. Most of the world’s countries have no native auto industry to protect and will gladly go for what’s the most economical.
Couple that with Chinese solar panels, wind turbines, and BESS the western auto and petroleum industries can be displaced in one fell swoop.
Evolve or die…
My horse can take over-the-air vocal commands! Moreover, it learns from direct experience, not remote updates! Level 6 SDV FTW!
Your horse also has limited self-healing abilities and can create more horses. Let’s see a Tesla do that!
Elon creating all those little Elons is about as close as we’re going to get to that.
Yup, Teslas are just…horse shit
It would kill Tesla’s business model!
SDV? One is like “What is software?” and the other is like “I got my one and only software upgrade in 2015”
VinFast is very interesting. In a market with zero Tesla or Rivian showrooms, we have a VinFast dealer and it’s in one of the higher-income parts of town. To date I’ve only seen one on the road, which is very confusing. There’s also little-to-no stigma against Tesla here, so the used market is so saturated, it’s almost dumb to not buy a used Tesla if we’re comparing purely the value for money. Not my jam, but I can’t fault people. SDVs and screens are two of my pet peeves, followed by cars that look like suppositories.
Europe needs to back off the EV mandates pretty quickly, but good luck selling that to a populace who has record-breaking wildfires and heatwaves in their backyard right now. It’s human nature to address the squeaky wheel, even if it’s a drop in the bucket towards any possible slowdown in AGW and warming trends (note in fairness for skeptics: even if AGW is overstated in terms of day-to-day weather, which is possible, people are inherently biased in favor of anything that might reduce their immediate pain)
I think Europe should increase EV mandates.
Even if you think global warming is hocus pocus (and I don’t give a shit who does or doesn’t), taking tailpipe emissions out of built up areas dramatically improves air quality and removes the harm that breathing these emissions does to humans.
EV and fuel economy mandates are what drives the technological development that we so desperately need for a prosperous future.
I look at that chart and my eyes just glaze over. I’m pretty sure my car falls off the left side somewhere.
Why do I need a car to do that again? I still don’t have an answer that makes sense, just a lot of buzzwords about brand synergy and dynamic actualism.
The truth is, I, as a person, am already TOO connected. So connecting my car just seems silly.
Love that too connected comment. Does a 1994 or 1986 even have an ECU? I’m sure the 99 does, otherwise how could
It tell me I’m getting 18mpg on the tiny screen in green? Also I hate the start button BS on my spouse’s ionic hybrid. LOL. What could possibly go wrong? Everything
Yeah but those are individual, non-connected computers that make the car run better. Seems like the computers in cars today make them run worse.
“…just a lot of buzzwords about brand synergy and dynamic
actualismautism.Where does my car come in as a SDV?? Well… It has electronic fuel injection? That’s about as advanced as it gets.
Mine don’t even have that! I guess the most advanced tech on my two vehicles is a wireless charging mount for my phone on my motorcycle.
Luddites, represent!!
Ooh fancy!
Every time I see a VINFast on the road here in SoCal I’m amazed someone actually bought one, but I’ve seen more of them on the road than I have Nissan 400Zs or Dodge Hornets.
I saw a Vinfast while driving through Dallas several months ago. I was behind it for a few miles, and it was otherwise wholly unremarkable.
I’m more suprised that people would purchase a Dodge Hornet.
Pretty sure most that I’ve seen were rentals.
I can stand in one spot on the sidewalk, next street over from mine, and see both a 400Z AND a Hornet.
I also live in SoCal, and I think you’re actually right – I see about as many VinFasts as I do 400Zs and Hornets. I’ve legit seen more Rolls-Royce Cullinans than any of the other cars mentioned.