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.
VinFast and LooseFast. How are they even allowed to sell these cars with this beta software which is both unstable and potentially dangerous? This is increasingly looking like a company which will be bankrupted by costly and endless recalls (unless ofc they have access to tons of cash somewhere, which in the current economic climate I would doubt).
VinFast is a part of the massive Vietnamese business group Vingroup.
It will be ballooned by they behemoth that has its fingers in near everything in Vietnam.
Some examples of items in their portfolio in Vietnam:
Hospitals
Universities
Schools
Shopping Malls
Resorts/Theme Parks
TVs
Smart Phones
Pharmaceuticals
Convenience Stores
Network Security
AI
It’s basically what happens when a country limita foreign companies and turns a blind eye to a domestic company buying every homegrown competitor.
Welcome aboard Emme! I’d have loved an introduction based on all the cool stuff I found on your website 😉
Thats a nice looking green at least.
If I was a billionaire, I know I’d do other things with money rather then shoveling 8.7 billion into a car brand that then makes blob appliances to rent. Perhaps an innovative car for the people? Or a sporty fun runabout? Or just about anything besides a plastic and rubber battery on wheels that bricks and creaks and ticks and tocks.
Personally, I’d get myself a race car and go very fast in circles, all the time.
I’m sorry. I just can’t take seriously an article that blasts the interior quality and NVH of a vehicle then proceeds to recommend the Bolt… I just can’t.
All aside, **shrugs** we’ll talk with them in a few years then I guess.
I’m sorry. I just can’t take seriously a comment that blasts the article for pointing out the interior quality of a $50k car is that of a $16k Versa and doesn’t understand why something like that would lead to the author to recommend a car that costs $20k less.
The article says that the Bolt costs more.
If ever there was a company that needs to slow down and stop breaking things, it’s this one.
It’s lines like this that’ll keep me reading the Autopian.
The editor’s notes might be a little a little arrogant and pedantic if not for the fact that JT and DT seem like genuinely nice, not arrogant or dickish (which is how I might feel if it was my writing that was marked up like this when published) people, and it adds a more conversational tone to the articles, or, it’s more of a move fast and break things approach in itself: we the readers demand content, content, content, now, so rather than marking stuff up and sending it back for rewrite after rewrite until it perfectly reflects the automotive zeitgeist and the editorial stance of the Autopian, they’ll just slap on their funny/pedantic notes that might otherwise remain hidden on track changes, and shove it out the door
new here?
Yes! But ancient in internet terms – when I went to register here the system somehow dug up my username and avatar from a long-forgotten publication called The Awl. And not really a car guy (88 Toyota Cargo Van > 96 Rav4 > 05 Forester > 16 CRV) but I do like reading good writing about them for some reason)
Just like me! Not a car guy AT ALL but I enjoy good humorous writing. Also I live somewhat in the (assumed) neighborhood of David Tracy’s new digs, so I put the Autopian bumper sticker on my battered 2004 MDX in case he happens to see it in a parking lot somewhere.
Articles do get rewritten and modified, and I kinda hoped DT would’ve added a note in mine! Maybe next time 🙂
It is partially a way we can get stuff up quicker, absolutely!
Fwiw I love the ed notes, but I do wish they were either shorter or less visually disruptive. Maybe in a sidebar? Smaller font? Footnote? Indented + smaller font + in a colored rectangle?
I edited magazines, actual paper magazines in an earlier life. Write-markup-rewrite-markup-rewrite is very 18th through 20th century.
Buyers of this are the same people that share Facebook scams… Let them have it… #mentalyhandicapt
50 large for this? I will laugh at you if I saw these driving around. Maybe we should get Bob Mayer from Miami to do a hot take on Vinfast. That would be hilarious.
207 miles from 82 kwh?! That’s only 2.5 miles/kwh, which is abysmal. I thought my Polestar 2 was a pig with 3.3 mi/kwh, which was one of the least efficient EVs on the market at the time I leased it. But the Polestar makes up for that by being completely awesome in every other way. Doesn’t sound like Vinfast has managed the same trade off. Terrible quality and the terrible efficiency? Only if it were also super cheap, which it isn’t. I mean, I know that the American consumer may not be viewed as the most discerning, but offering this turd for sale here is an insult.
PS- nice article Emme! Always happy to see another talented writer in the Autopian garage.
The only place the Vifast likely beats the Polestar 2 is in cupholders, that situation in the Polestar 2 is so mind boggling terrible. An otherwise great car and that center console is just so poorly designed.
Eh, it’s not so bad once you get used to it. And when the worst thing anyone can point to is cupholders, I’ll take that as a win. 🙂
I’m no history buff, but looking at a selection of countries entering the US car market: Japan, then Korea, then Vietnam — I’m noticing that the pattern is common to other world events.
Might we see Iraqi or Afghan cars on US roads in a few decades?
Panama first, because Noreiga.
Don’t forget Grenada!
I know a couple Boomers would never come close to buying this though. My father in law would have disowned us if we thought of buying a Vietnamese car. It was bad enough that we have Vietnamese friends.
But we already had Grenada cars in the US. My grandparents had one.
We had English, German, Swedish, Canadian-built and Mexico-built vehicles before the Koreans.
Chinese vehicles (thanks a lot, GM) invaded our shores before the VinFast.
VinSlowTheFuckDownAndFocusOnTheDetails
“But honestly, it’s not the worst overall experience I’ve ever had.”
I’m genuinely curious what overall vehicle experience could be worse. I don’t think I have ever read a more savage review of a new vehicle, although it sounds like the vehicle is genuinely terrible and earned its scorn.
Dental surgery?
Yugo?
Welcome to the Autopian Emme
I love a scrappy/questionable underdog and will become an appologist for all sorts of wonky shit. I’m not ready to spend money on one, but I’d love to try a Vinfast just to test my broken vehicle tolerance
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 ?
Regarding the editor’s notes … just write your own article?
Long editor’s notes are something David and I decided we like to do, sometimes.
Well keep at them. I find the interjections awesome. Its interesting to see what each of you thinks is of sufficient importance to interject in someone else’s article.
The editor’s notes made it seem like you were desperate to saying something positive. Does VinFast have particularly vindictive lawyers? Or maybe a team of assassins??
(I do like the lengthy editor’s note, by the way)
Overly positive reviews are basically the default in auto writing.
For as long as automakers give out fancy press trips and swag, I expect that to continue.
This is not a knock on this site in particular, just an unfortunate part of the business. I’m honestly surprised a review this negative was allowed to see the light of day. Maybe Vinfast won’t be around long enough to disinvite the Autopian from their next vehicle release?
Torch better not go to Viet Nam.
Of course he is welcome in China thanks to Changli.
Yeah. I get that The Autopian needs to be able to get press cars. I guess this is a better option than having the article itself be gushing.
Haha, I know, and I do actually like them. They were just particularly long in this article so I (apparently) had to make an asinine comment about them.
Idk man, I love Torch and DT.. and a couple comments here and there is one thing… but the long editor’s paragraphs in here were just disruptive. The author was giving their honest review (still curious what the “worse” experience was) and the editor’s notes were 100% opposite… seemingly stretching hard to find *something* positive to say. Weird.
It wouldn’t be The Autopian without editor’s notes! (Really, I like them!)
They’ve got to do something about that name, too. Vinfast sounds like a second-rate Carfax competitor.
VinFast: for those of you who were born 30 years too late for a Yugo.
But, like, Yugos were cheap. Very cheap.
Seriously, when I first heard of this venture I was sure they were going for bargain bin pricing. Very few people are going to take a leap of faith at 50-plus. Not sure what the strategy is there.
Oh man… I work in software testing, and I am relentless in my shit-talking when I’m given requirements that end in question marks. That this made its way to production documentation is so egregious deserves all the shame.
I feel like Malcolm Bricklin might have possessed Phạm Nhật Vượng, this is like the modern equivalent of the SV-1 or Subaru 360.
The design reminds me of something that exists in GTA5. Unfortunately, so does the lovely green color, and both are nearly fictional in today’s world.
Reminds me one of those “Behind the Wheel” videos.
This isn’t half-baked. It’s like 1/256th baked.
Sounds like Hyundai twenty years ago. Spec-sheet wonders that needed fine tuning to get right.
Also, they really need that US factory or they’re going to be destroyed in the upcoming EV price wars. Tesla fired the opening shot but the battle won’t be joined until next year when all those MY 2025 EV’s from GM and VW start coming.
In theory cheap Vietnamese labor can make them competitive without the rebates, but in practice, cheap Vietnamese labor isn’t (yet) skilled enough to make products competitive with rebated cars built by established makers with US plants/supply chains.
I mean, this is just an eye-watering price for this vehicle unless it’s fully competitive on fit/finish/driving, and it clearly isn’t.
It would be interesting to dyno test one of these to see how accurate their claimed horsepower and torque figures are.
Maybe not the biggest takeaway, but what good is a 10 year 125,000 mile warranty if all you can do is lease it? Or for that matter, if you have serious doubts about the company existing 10 years from now?
How about the car existing 10 months from now? This review gives me “battery fires incoming” vibes.
It gets you a headline, especially when you’re going to have to fight against people assuming your cars on the verge of exploding.
That they’re lease only suggests, to me, that they don’t have the confidence they’re pretending to with the warranty.
He did specify that the City model is lease only. To me the subtext stated that the longer range slower charging model might be available for purchase?
My understanding was that if you insist, VinFast will indeed sell the car to you outright. The original intent was lease only but I assume they had some inquiries about purchase.
Things have been changing rapidly in the VinFast saga so could be different now, but this what I recall from watching them earlier.
Vinfast would be very grateful, without a doubt, if anyone were to buy one of these outright and make it go away.
Well they were hardly as “green” as VinFast, but I remember the same doubt being shared about Hyundai when they rolled out the 10/100 warranty. While Hyundai had been around longer, their reputation was basically terrible. Worked out OK for them.