After the US and Indonesia, India will be the next foreign market targeted by VinFast in building an electric vehicle assembly plant to take advantage of the incentives and advantages of the host country.
On October 5, VinFast announced the business situation in the third quarter of 2023 as well as the development orientation in the coming time. Accordingly, the company said it plans to develop its business in at least 50 new markets globally by the end of 2024.
VinFast also informed about the plan to build an assembly plant in India, the world's third largest automobile market, after the plan to build factories in the US and Indonesia was announced earlier. Total factory investment in India is expected to be about 150 to 200 million US dollars, phase 1 capacity up to 50,000 vehicles per year.
According to VinFast, the construction of factories in new markets allows the company to take advantage of local government incentives, reduce tariffs and access raw materials at attractive prices. The investment budget for assembly plants in Indonesia and India will be balanced from the optimal total investment in the next 2 years.
From mid-2022, the Indian media has seen VinFast's electric car model appearing in this country. At that time, the specialized vehicle was carrying behind the black VF 8, the area most likely seen near Pune, the seventh most populous city in India. A source also said that VinFast has hired partners in an effort to develop a technical service center in Pune, possibly for testing purposes.
India is considered a potential market for electric vehicles. The attraction comes from the world's second largest population size with about 1.4 billion people. The government of this country also has made moves to promote electric vehicles. Indian people are tending to switch from gasoline motorbikes to electric motorbikes and buy more electric cars.
Meanwhile, Reuters said that in a filing sent to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), VinFast wants to invest $1.2 billion in the Indonesian market for long-term goals. Of these, 200 million USD is expected to be spent to build the factory with an initial capacity of about 30,000-50,000 vehicles/year, expected to go into operation from 2026.
Previously, on July 28, VinFast announced the start of an electric vehicle factory at the Triangle Innovation Point in Chatham County, North Carolina (USA). The project has an area of about 733 hectares with an expected capacity of 150,000 vehicles/year in phase 1. The factory will consist of 2 main areas: production - assembly of electric vehicles, and auxiliary industrial parks.
VinFast's first car factory is located in Hai Phong, inaugurated in June 2019. It has a phase 1 design capacity of 250,000 vehicles/year, phase 2 is 500,000 vehicles/year, and a production speed of about 38 vehicles/hour.
VinFast's automobile factory has a complete product production cycle with 6 factories including: stamping workshop, body welding workshop, painting workshop, engine workshop, auxiliary workshop, and assembly workshop. The workshops are connected and automated with thousands of ABB robots, and many production operators from Siemens and SAP.